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oddygaul · 4 months

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The Hunger Games Cinematic Universe

To preface, it does feel a little weird to critique these movies as if they sprung from nowhere. They’re all pretty faithful adaptations, which is relevant because many of my problems with this series are structural / worldbuilding issues, and so aren’t necessarily the fault of the adaptation as much as the source material itself. On the other hand, it’s pretty easy to rattle off some adaptations that took risks and made something fairly transformative - Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, or anything Masaaki Yuasa has adapted come to mind - so fuck em, they’re fair game.

(I’d seen the first two movies a decade ago, and read the trilogy after that. Ballad and the Mockingjay films were new to me.)

The Hunger Games

Okay, so the original holds up as far as I’m concerned. What sets it apart from much of the post-apocalyptic or action YA that I’ve seen is ultimately how grounded it manages to keep its portrayal of all the kids. I think a lot of fiction with a similar premise tend to falls prey to Anime Syndrome: yes, all the characters are 16 or 17 or whatever, and the authors will make them do some classic teen angst things like get into stupid arguments and be deeply hormonal, but they fail to have the kids react to the horrifying situations they find themselves in convincingly. This is the plight of any battle shounen: the characters are literally fighting to the death against some manner of horrible supernatural monster, or even other human beings, yet will be written like a little devil-may-care badass, or even be stoked about getting to tEsT tHEiR LiMitS! If you’re going for a fun action show, that’s fine, but if you’re trying to sell it as a drama, you’ve already lost your biggest chip.

The Hunger Games (the first one, mind) never forgets that all its characters are young as hell. The absolute shaking terror of the cornucopia, the wide eyed panic as Katniss and Foxface come face-to-face and realize that neither of them wants to do harm, even Cato’s eleventh hour realization that his entire life and persona are ultimately meaningless*, all fill the story with a pathos that makes the movie work, despite some inherent YA cheese.

*Probably my favorite addition to the movie.

I really love the stupid-ass beard they gave this guy

Catching Fire

Yeah, this is where it starts to fall apart for me. The first act prior to the Games is pretty compelling; our look into Katniss’ PTSD, her and Peeta’s inability to reintegrate into society as if nothing happened, and the acute, sudden horror they’re slammed with upon realizing they’re being forced back into the games are all handled incredibly well. The first half hour of this movie feels like slowly waking up from a bad dream, only to realize you’re still asleep.

After that, though… eh.

I think what bothers me about the Games themselves in this one is that everyone taking part is an adult now. Part of what makes the concept of the Hunger Games so brutal is the age of the contestants - and not merely in a pearl-clutching, oh-jeez-it’s-so-horrible-to-see-this-violence-done-upon-the-youth sort of way. There’s just a special abhorrence tied to watching a bunch of children, who ought to have their whole lives ahead of them, slowly have the dawning realization that their whole world is now this mere microcosm, in which their only options are murder or death. Watching this emotional turmoil play out differently for each character is what makes the setup compelling; horrible, wrenching, but compelling.

So, having the idea for this one be that these grown-ass adults, each of whom has (by definition of being a victor) gone through this incredible trauma before, is willing to go back again and fight like it was the first time? I dunno, it feels goofy to me. And I’m not saying they have a choice to participate - I know it’s mandated - I mean that once they’re in the arena, half of them seem to go “oh well, here I go killin’ again!” like they’re clocking in for a job. It’s not like they’re sliding back into their old psychology by force once they’re in the arena, either - even in the training center, the careers are doing their usual sneering badass routine. You could make the argument that successful careers are the most likely to have child actor syndrome - that they stopped emotionally maturing after the Games and are stoked to be back in their element, Football Player That Peaked in High School style - but that feels so reductive.

I guess the fact that half of the tributes get in on the Secret Rebellion Plan kind of addresses this - they are working toward a goal in the background - but it still feels off. I wish the movie spent more time exploring the mindset of all the contestants before the games started to flesh out their motivations. As is, the Games here no longer feel like blood sport exploring the psychological response to trauma - they’re just blood sport.

Also, the violence feels very sanitized. Say what you will about the shakycam used in the first movie (it is undoubtedly excessive at times), but the confusion it provides combined with the blood makes the 74th Games feel absolutely terrifying. It gives the sense that no one is prepared for how primal things are becoming as the situation descends into a barbaric haze of violence. In Catching Fire, meanwhile, the bloodbath feels like it’s by-the-numbers for everybody - Katniss and friends group up and just start killin’ Bad Guys** right off the bat like it’s nothing, barely even watching their backs as they talk to each other. I read that the director of #2 and on made an intentional decision not to show blood, because he doesn’t like ‘glorifying violence’... I truly don’t understand how showing a bunch of characters cleanly and effortlessly killing other people like they’re in a Marvel movie is any better.

**This is just a symptom of my larger issues with the worldbuilding, but I really think the careers and their motivation get such short shrift in these movies. They explore it a bit in the first movie, but in Catching Fire they’re fully content to have the careers be easy Evil Bad Guys that the viewer isn’t supposed to feel bad for when they die. It’s another touch that betrays its YA roots, and reminds me of Harry Potter - “Welcome to Hogwarts! We’ve sorted you into the evil house for evil, no-good children, which exists because we need to have antagonists.”

This is also where the rebellion bits start popping up, but I’ll talk about those in a moment because…

Mockingjay I & II

…that’s what these entire movies are about and it’s so, so dicey.

Honestly, to me it feels like Collins had a great idea for a standalone book, but then, by dint of it being YA, was obligated to have the characters eventually band together to take down the big bad Capitol, and just didn’t have a great grasp on how the wider world worked or what a strong revolution story looks like. I think this story worked the best when it was only a small snapshot of the world, with all the periphery implied; the more it’s forced to get into the real nitty gritty of how the setting works, the more ramshackle and unbelievable everything feels, and Mockingjay is where it hits a breaking point. It’s not that there are plot holes, exactly, it’s that we see so little of the wider world that everything feels grossly oversimplified.

I think this is where these films’ dogged adherence to the source material really screws them over. While the books are also lacking in worldbuilding and context from the perspective of other characters, it makes sense there because the books are all first-person POV. Of course we don’t get cutaways to citizens in the Capitol ruminating on their role in all this, or seeing the inner workings of the Peacekeepers to give them any characterization whatsoever outside of being blank plastic suits, because Katniss doesn’t see that. Since the movies have fully done away with this conceit, though, the omission of these supporting scenes feels glaring - especially when the movies are trying so hard to push this theme that everyone has their own fight, and both sides have a reason for their actions.

So, on that note, thematically it’s a fucking mess. It dips its toes into a dozen different themes without really firmly exploring any of them, leaving it feeling indecisive and tonally inconsistent. For example, Mockingjay I spends its intro showing the effect Katniss’ PTSD is having on her, and challenging the idea that just because someone has gone through trauma, they’re a hero and ought to be set up as the mouthpiece of the revolution - how can you ethically put the responsibility of leadership on someone who gets the shakes every time they hear a bang? …but then, not to worry, show her a cool superhero outfit and she’s out there shooting down gunships with fuckin Hawkeye arrows by dinnertime.

And the wider revolution story has many similar issues. What’s your message? Dictators are bad? Wow, what a take. Both sides committed atrocities, so they’re both bad? Politics are hard and messy, and you just gotta keep your head down and hope you can retire to the country? Yeah, way to really take a hard stance on that one.

If I put all that aside, it generally works as a character piece - Katniss and Peeta’s development over the course of the story, in particular, is well done through and through, and it feels rare to see a broad appeal series like have the nerve to take its leads to such dark places. There’s also a lot of surprisingly great character acting throughout; my personal standouts are Hutcherson, Stanley Tucci, and (surprisingly) Woody Harrelson, but there’s honestly not a bad actor in the bunch, which is impressive. Still, with the subject material being so heavy, it’s hard for me just to take it at face value like that, and I wish they shored up the weaker elements a bit.

I’m just saying, if you spend that much of your screentime showing crowds of children being murdered by IEDs, I think you ought to be building towards a strong statement.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Yeah, this one felt like a waste of a movie in a really weird way. The execution was incredibly well done - lots of solid acting, production design, etc, which is a huge waste because the basic premise of the movie is fucking worthless.

So, the whole point, I would say, of doing a prequel is to flesh out interesting parts of your universe that you didn’t have time for in the original work. Unanswered questions, a character’s past that you want to learn more about, a deeper dive into parts of the world or lore that weren’t touched on but caught people’s imagination. The Hunger Games series has plenty of gaps that need to be filled: I said above how incredibly small the world seems due to barely exploring any of the capitol, other districts, etc., so it was ripe for a prequel or spinoff! Let us spend some time in other districts, see how other people live and feel about the whole thing. Even if we’re not going post-war, and are going back to the era of the Games (which of course we would), there’s 75 years worth of questions to explore.

Instead of focusing on any of that, the premise of this movie (/book) is “Hey, you know the villain from the original story that seemed like a huge, irredeemable piece of shit? Let’s spend a two and a half hour runtime telling you his backstory, which will show you that actually… he’s always been a piece of shit”. Wow. Spellbinding.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a main character being a bad person. Particularly, if your character is charismatic, they don’t necessarily have to be right or good to be interesting to watch; there’s a certain magnetism to watching that for a lot of people. It’s never been my cup of tea, to be honest; whether pegged as comedy (Always Sunny) or drama (Breaking Bad), I get fed up really quickly when I hate everyone in a piece of fiction. But done correctly, it can still be interesting - showing how a character ended up where they are, showing you a rare good side of them you’d never seen, or showing that they used to be moral, but just happened to be tested one too many times and fell off the deep end.

Snow is none of these. He’s a piece of shit from the first time we see him, he consistently acts like a piece of shit to everyone around him, and then he ends up, in fact, being a piece of shit***. What’s interesting about that?

***I think the most generous interpretation I could give of his character is a piece of shit who briefly dabbles in transactional friendship after Lucy Gray saves him from the rubble, then shortly thereafter returns to being a piece of shit. Which I still do not find especially compelling.

Even outside of that, it’s one of those prequels that does nothing but make the world feel smaller - rather than expanding on any of the dozens of untouched ideas in the series, we spend a bunch more time in District 12, and show that, actually, it turns out Snow and his hangups are the only reason anything happened in this universe for nearly 100 years. From Katniss’ name to the Hanging Tree song she sings, turns out half the things we learned in The Hunger Games resulted from this one particular guy’s life story. In a series that already felt like the world was too small and was in desperate need of expansion, further narrowing the scope feels like such a misstep.

Why yes, I did need to know exactly what the Kessel Run was!

Odds & Ends

I mostly blocked out my memories of Mockingjay the book from the single time I read it back in the day, because I thought it was booty, but the one thing I remembered liking that they changed up was Finnick’s death. In the book, he’s just there one moment and gone the next, without any fanfare or time to grieve, which serves to make his death feel especially cruel. I suppose it was inevitable, but counter-intuitively, the Big Hollywood Death Scene they gave him here felt a lot less impactful.

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A point about the series in general: boy did the costume design bother me. It’s interesting, because all I remembered about it from when this series blew up was the gaudy Capitol style and how crazy the internet was about it. Watching these movies again, I feel like that success was a total fluke, because everything else is goofy as hell. The way that every district has their own bespoke fucking Civil War re-enactment outfits is wild - look, the ‘District 11 is just one big Southern plantation’ thing was always really obvious, but seeing each district dressed up like they're from competing historical re-enactment groups was wild.

The prequel turns this up to 11. I feel like someone on the team though they were real clever - this one’s set 60 years earlier, so let’s make all the outfits and design retro! What? People in flapper clothes, the lake scene with their 1940s swimsuits, even the logo and graphic design in the Hunger Games broadcasting room looking like it’s from the 50s - it doesn’t make any fucking sense. Yeah, they’re set decades before the original books - in the year, like, 2300. What, everyone just forgot how to do graphic design again after the war? Fashion is cyclical, but not like this…

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Also, movies 1 and 2 in particular definitely have some uncomfortable racial dynamics going on. I was already weirded out that a lot of the districts seem to be separated by ethnicity, but as you go on, it’s hard to ignore how nearly every Black person seems to exist solely to help Katniss along in her quest before dying horribly and usually on-camera. Rue, Thresh, Cinna, even that old man that flashes the salute in District 11… it’s remarkably consistent.

#will's media thoughts / virtual brain repository #movies #the hunger games #catching fire #mockingjay #the ballad of songbirds and snakes

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megafurbz · 2 years

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MIMI TOHU - 3/03/2022 “A-loh Boh may-may” / “the Light’s lover” interviewed by Tianita Miramax 🌸

Tianita : Hello Mimi, can you introduce yourself for the furbz that never heard of you ?

Mimi Tohu : Dah ay-loh u-tye ! My name is Mimi Tohu, i’m 20, i live in Koo-dah since 2019, i have spent most of my life on Earth, in France, Italy and Spain. I worked for fashion magazines there. When I decided to come back to the Cloud Continent, i needed to rethink my approach of photography, i wanted to find the reason why i was doing it in the first place.

T: That seems to be the purpose of your new series “A-loh” (*light), did you find what you were looking for ?

MT: it is quite a question… Since 2019 i took pictures as an astronaut, recreating the “earthly atmosphere” in wich i evolved during many years. I almost felt like i could not understand this world anymore. Everything looked too material, too strongly present, even if the colours where satisfying.

I was looking for something else, something impalpable, like a very distant childhood memory. I realised that it could be the light itself. The light is very different on the Cloud Continent, because we are closer to the Sun than on Earth. It has this look of what earthlings would call paradise. A very soft context for the bodies to appear, the light is really all around, softening clouds and it reacts differently with the camera. So yeah, i think i found what really moved me with photography, the reassuring omnipresence of Light.

T: In “A-loh” you also evoke myths, as you previously did in your older series 2015 “Edenia”, is that important for you to revisit those set-ups ?

MT: I really loved my Earth mythology classes back in the days, i remember it was often very difficult for a furb like me to get the meaning behind those stories, and i had no clue about Furby myths either so i just jumped into this world of symbols like a baby in a pool… And I fell in love with those people who pop-up from shells… *laughs*

I like to emulate humans sometimes, so i put my models into typically human situations. For example we would never pose as divinities, because it is a weird idea ! But it can be fun doing that just to embody something bigger than you. I like to try things, i don’t like to take them too seriously. It can also be a way to chase A-loh.

T: Will you pursue the chase in upcoming projects ?

MT: Ee for sure ! i’m currently working with a team of meteorologists on a independent movie project directed by Trolouka Ruby expected for next year ! We study the composition of clouds and microcosms that have developed inside. It’s a very poetic piece of work about ecology and society.

And an extended version of “A-loh” will be shown in the collective exhibition Oo-tee (*Sky animals) at the NEST in April so i am very noo-loo !

T: yay ! Dah-kah-oo-nye Mimi ! We will be there !

🌸

+++

You can see the photographs by Mimi Tohu in their open studio : 3 lay-lah / Koo-dah / Dah ay-loh-may-lah or on the many photobooks on sales in your best libraries ! The photo series will of course be available for MegafurbZ in exclusivity !

See photos HERE !

#megafurbz #furby #allfurby #furbymedia #furby photography #mimi tohu #photograph #photography #art #interview #furby interview #tianita miramax #furby community #furby love #furb #a-loh #ay-loh #online magazine

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gravelyhumerus · 3 years

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Criminal Minds College AU - Chapter Seventeen

Fandom: Criminal Minds

Title: “I may just take your breath away”

Relationship: Jemily

Summary:

Exams, pizza, board games... what more could a girl ask for?

Slow-burn Jemily college AU where they live across the hall and despite all odds, the universe pushes them together. AKA they’re silly gay babies who pine after each other for months.

Read it on AO3

Tumblr: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, (bonus scene), Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty

“That was a lot of chess,” Emily complained, nearly chugging her latte as she and Spencer left the coffee shop.

She pulled her beanie onto her head and braced herself for the snow as the taller boy held the door open for her. Emily almost slipped on the slushy tile floor on her way out but managed to keep her balance.

“Fifteen of the multiple-choice questions to be precise,” Spencer replied. The salted sidewalk crunched under their feet as they made their way across campus.

“I’m so glad it’s finally over,” she admitted. “I think I’ve had enough philosophy to last me a lifetime.”

“I’m enrolled in ‘Minds and Machines’ next semester,” he said. “I think I might try and get a double minor this time around.”

“What’s the goal? Three PhDs by the time you’re 24?” Emily quipped.

He was well on his way, having completed his engineering degree before she managed to graduate high school. He was 17, only two years younger than her, but somehow seemed like a kid. A kid with more education crammed into his brain than she could ever master in her life.

“Something like that,” he replied with a smile. His hair was getting long and he had tied it back during the exam. With last names starting with P and R, they were seated near each other in the large exam hall, and she glanced over at him as he fussed with his hair.

They stopped at the red light, watching as the cars and busses wooshed past them, sending the slush flying into the snowbanks. It had been a fairly sunny day, but bitterly cold. Now, the sun was setting and the campus was bathed in a warm golden glow. The snow had fallen the night before, leaving fluffy white snow covering their campus.

Emily had spent most of the day holed up in the library with Spencer, with him quizzing her on fallacies and philosophers. With his eidetic memory, he only really needed to read the material once. Earlier in the semester, she did feel useful when it came to editing each other’s essays. He always got bogged down with detail, word vomiting everything he knew, and she helped him with his structure and argumentation.

More studying awaited her back in her room. She rubbed at the back of her neck as she thought about the upcoming evening spent hunched over her desk studying criminal justice, a subject that left her questioning her degree half the time as she was forced to learn about the muddled ethics of justice.

That week, she had survived on minimal sleep, eating mostly bagels and coffee to sustain her. Her body was protesting with each step, and she had suffered from a constant tension headache for as long as she remembered. At least her college had that golden retriever walk around at the library yesterday, she thought to herself, sarcastically. Animal therapy definitely relieved all her stress. As if petting a dog for five minutes would fix the anxiety of finals season.

Two more exams, she reminded herself. You’ll make it.

Despite this mantra, Emily was conflicted. While finals were killing her, the end of the semester also meant winter break. Emily would be forced to go “home” for the holidays. For most college students, that meant going back to their respective towns and being surrounded by their loved ones. Emily, on the other hand, didn’t have anywhere she called home. Last winter break, her mom had at least been in DC, and Emily was able to catch up with some of her international school friends who were in the city. This time, her mom was stationed in London, and Emily knew she’d be roped back into her old life. She didn’t know anyone there and knew most of her break would be spent alone.

The last place she had called home was Rome, and now that was tarnished by her complicated past with that city.

Emily was good at being alone. Being an only child of a workaholic single mom meant she learned to keep her own company. She read a lot. She got good at running away, escaping her nannies, and skirting security in order to roam free. She’d be fine.

The problem was that Emily had gotten used to this. She rarely spent a moment alone these days. Whether it was walking to class with Spencer, or Hotch, or Derek, getting lunch with the team, surprise coffee dates with Penelope and spending almost every evening with her girlfriend, she hadn’t been left alone in ages. She didn’t miss it.

Their residence building had a warm yellow light shining out of the windows and a soft red brick facade. In the summer, ivy grew up the south facing side but in the winter, the ledges were covered in snow and the stone steps were slippery. She trudged forward, excited for the warm embrace of the dorm.

Spencer had other plans. He reached into the garish yellow plastic newspaper box that was stationed next to their doorway and retrieved this week’s newspaper.

“Come on Reid,” Emily said. “Just subscribe to the newsletter or something like the rest of us.”

He held up the cover to her in surprise. Usually it reported the news of a recent sports victory, or a change of policy announced by the administrators, or even a fun event held on campus. Sometimes there was even a dramatic protest or an important speaker coming to campus. But this week, the headline surprised her. In large font printed across the page read: “Multiple student politicians fired amid financial scandal.”

“That sounds bad,” Emily said. It did seem way more dramatic on newsprint than on a website, so maybe Spencer was onto something with his affinity for the printed word.

Grabbing a copy for herself, she then walked inside to escape the cold. Warm air greeted them as they entered their residence hall, and both students kicked the snow off their boots before trudging up the stairs. They read as they walked, but the route to their rooms was already muscle memory, so neither worried about stumbling on their way.

Normally, Emily wouldn’t willingly touch this sort of student politics with a ten foot pole. Sure, she was involved with the Criminology council, but there was a difference between the kind of person interested in petitioning for better accessibility to faculty events or running a bake sale, and the kind of students to embezzle thousands of student dollars like what the current student government executive seemed to be accused of doing.

She quickly ran her eyes down the page, the contents jogging a memory from Halloween, of Hotch and JJ discussing the early stirrings of said scandal.

“You know,” Spencer said, “I’m surprised they got a lot of this information, it’s notoriously difficult to file FOIAs for student governments, as they’re technically private corporations. So the fact that they got these files means that this is a much bigger scandal than one might assume.”

Corruption, bribery, embezzlement, nepotism. All words that jogged memories of hiding in the corner of political fundraisers, overhearing the worst of politics from too-drunk elites sipping on their wine and munching on charcuterie.

“I hate politics,” Emily said, stuffing her copy of the paper into her bag.

“I find it interesting. It’s basically a microcosm of our current political climate. In fact, I have subscribed to the print edition of fifteen student papers in the region,” Spencer said, “I like to keep informed on the coverage of student issues, and compare them to our own.”

“Why?!” Emily said with a laugh. “You know you can just look them up online.”

Spencer gave her a withering look, and she should have known better than asking about his aversion to tech. He loathed having to use his computer, as the LCD screens apparently gave him a headache. Penelope even gave him a pair of blue light glasses to attempt to alleviate the issue.

Then, he began to speak, at length, about the dying printed news industry and why print copies were better for understanding than screens et cetera. She made sure to nod and hum at appropriate points, but her mind kept wandering.

She wondered if her girlfriend was in her room. Emily missed her any time they were apart and she yearned to hold her in her arms once again. But she shouldn’t. She needed to work. She had too much to do. Her grades had slipped, slightly, this semester. Everyone warned her about how college would be harder than high school, but no one ever warned her how much the expectations were raised in second year.

Two more exams. She clutched her coffee tighter. She’d rather do anything else besides study at this point. Her body was exhausted, her mind frazzled. She wondered if she could even manage to get through a chapter of revision before conking out on her desk.

As she said goodbye to Spencer and struggled with her keys that were tangled up in their corresponding university-branded lanyard, JJ’s door opened.

“Hey girlfriend,” JJ greeted her, sounding way too much like a straight girl greeting her platonic friend for Emily’s taste. She gave her a pass because it sounded cute in her voice.

“JJ!” Emily said, somehow surprised to see her despite the fact that she lived right across the hall. Her girlfriend was dressed in sweatpants and an oversized sweater, with her straight hair tucked behind her ears and her face bare of make up. Her face was lit up with a smile, and Emily rushed towards her, planting a soft kiss on her lips.

“Hi JJ,” Spencer said as Emily and JJ kissed.

When they pulled apart, JJ gave Spencer a smile as a greeting and asked them how their exam went.

Spencer babbled about their Logic exams for a minute or two, as Emily basked in JJ’s presence. She grabbed onto her hand and found that it was so much hotter than her own and wasn’t sure if she held on tight because she was cold, or if she had missed her girlfriend.

“I’m just glad it’s over,” Emily said. “I never want to hear about fallacies again.”

Spencer seemed to want to say something, but fell silent at Emily’s tired expression.

“Wanna come in for a bit?” JJ whispered in Emily’s ear. Apparently she said so a touch too loud because Spencer replied instead.

“Sure!” he said, and then walked into JJ and Penelope’s room.

“I should really study,” Emily tried to argue, but a single glance into JJ’s deep, blue eyes had Emily melting.

JJ’s room was much messier than Emily had last seen it. Both desks showed clear markers of the ongoing exams, with papers and books piled high. In addition to this was an assortment of pillows strewn all over the floor.

“You guys are back early!” JJ said, after checking her watch, “I thought it was a two hour exam?”

“I finished in an hour,” Spencer said, “and Emily only needed an extra half hour on top of my time.”

Damn straight, Emily thought, feeling somewhat competitive with the boy-genius despite herself.

She really should study, but the prospect of seeing her girlfriend outweighed the desire to sit hunched over a textbook for another evening.

Emily and Spencer kicked off their boots, placing them neatly on the mat by the door before peeling their jackets off and hanging them on the back of her door. Emily wasn’t sure if she liked winter. Whenever her mother was stationed in the Middle East she yearned for snow, but now that she was experiencing the Nor’easter for the first time, the desert sounded like a good time.

“Well there goes my plan,” JJ said, blowing her hair out of her face with a puff of air.

Spencer flopped onto Penelope’s neatly-made bed, collapsing into the assortment of pink pillows while carefully keeping his take-away cup upright. Emily sat down next to JJ on her bed.

“Your plan?” Emily asked.

“Yeah,” JJ said, sounding a bit shy. “I had this whole plan to make up a blanket fort here for you, and I would surprise you with it when you walked in.’”

JJ gestured with her hands at the mess. Blankets and pillows were strewn about, and a bundle of fairy lights were laying in the middle of the floor.

“Then you came back early,” JJ concluded. “Spence, I thought you’d keep her occupied longer!”

“You didn’t tell me that,” he replied. Spencer looked quizzically at her, shrugged, then took another sip of his coffee.

“I just wanted us to have a cute date night,” JJ admitted. “I know you’re so stressed, and you deserve a break.”

Emily grabbed her girlfriend’s moving hands and held them in her own. She felt overwhelmed. JJ was so… thoughtful. Caring. Attentive. So many things that were absolutely foreign to Emily. No one had ever tried to impress her like this.

“It’s okay,” Emily said. “We don’t need anything special to have a cute date night. You’re cute enough.”

JJ gave Emily a goofy smile in response.

“Okay,” JJ said. “If you say so.”

“You’re building a blanket fort?” Spencer asked. “I actually have some experience with blanket fort architecture.”

“You do?” JJ asked, raising her eyebrows skeptically.

“Of course,” he replied, seeming almost offended that she questioned him. “It sparked my interest in engineering. I wanted to overcome the problem of chair-tippage when it came to building the structure, so I devised a system of counter-weights that I found increased the structural integrity by 53%. My mom always told me that I could be an architect, but I thought the sciences better suited my intellect.”

“Oh?” Emily asked, genuinely interested. How would someone measure the structural integrity of a blanket fort?

“Actually, I have some blueprints. Let me grab them,” he said, standing up and making a move for the door.

“Of course you have blueprints,” JJ laughed.

“I should probably go feed Gideon, anyway. I’ll be right back!” Spencer said. Before closing the door behind him.

“Gideon?” Emily asked.

“His fish,” JJ said, “the one he won at the fair. It’s named after his professor, I think.”

She shrugged. The kid was weird, they tended to just accept that.

“I guess Spencer’s joining us on date night,” JJ said. “Sorry. I know you’re stressed and probably want to be studying, but I thought we’d order pizza and just have one night off. Just us. And Spencer.”

JJ planted a firm kiss on Emily’s lips, leaving her dazed and blushing.

“Relaxing sounds perfect,” Emily said, pulling her girlfriend closer to her. “I can’t believe it’s already exams. This semester has flown by. Soon it’ll be winter break, and I won’t get to see you.”

“I can’t imagine you not being right across the hall,” JJ said. “Who will give me kisses when I want them?”

JJ kissed Emily, sucking on Emily’s bottom lip slightly before pulling apart to look at her.

“I know you’re joking, but I hope you’re not kissing anybody else, no matter the circumstances.”

With that established, Emily pounced on her girlfriend, pushing her onto her bed and kissing her deeply. She intertwined her fingers in the blonde locks that were splayed out in a golden halo and breathed in deep, taking in the warm scent of the lilac candle that burnt on her night side table.

All her worries melted away at JJ’s touch. Emily’s brain was filled with the feeling of JJ’s lips on hers, with her lithe form beneath her. Exams, student politics and thoughts of home were wiped away, and her stress faded into background noise.

JJ’s pliant form writhed under Emily’s, her hands sneaking below Emily’s sweater and dancing over her back. They deepened the kiss until they were making out like teenagers in JJ’s dorm with the door still open a crack.

This was how Spencer, accompanied by Derek, found them when they pushed open the door with blanket fort blueprints and bags of potato chips in hand.

Spencer made a surprised noise, which made Emily aware of his return. She jumped up and pulled apart from JJ with a dark red blush gracing her cheeks.

“Woah there ladies,” Derek said with a laugh. “Keep it in your pants!”

“Guys! I was gone for five minutes!” Spencer whined.

Emily stood up awkwardly, stuffing her hands in her pockets as she watched JJ sit up and pat her hair down in a huff.

“Sorry,” Emily grumbled, not really meaning it. She would never be sorry for kissing JJ, but she was sorry for the awkwardness

“Pretty boy dragged me down the hall,” Derek said in explanation. He had Spencer’s rolled-up fort plans in his hand, and lightly smacked Emily’s head with it, making a comedic thwap noise as it made contact. “Hope you weren’t in the middle of something?”

“Only JJ’s legs,” Emily quipped to everyone’s surprise, even her own. JJ hit her jokingly and blushed.

“Hey!” Derek laughed, “Let’s keep this PG!”

“You called?” The voice of Penelope Garcia—PG if you will—rang out from the hallway, and within seconds JJ’s room was filled with just about all their friends standing around in a slightly awkward silence: JJ, Emily, Spencer and Derek were joined by Penelope with Hotch in tow.

The latter two of them had grown closer recently and walked into the room with white shopping bags with the walrus logo printed on the side, looking like they had just returned from out in the cold. Penelope and Hotch going thrifting together, that’s new! Emily thought to herself and decided to file the observation for later. The image of Hotch watching Penelope’s customary fashion show was enough to make her laugh under her breath.

“We’re building a blanket fort,” Spencer announced, changing the subject to the task at hand. “Are you guys helping?”

“Oh you know I will, boy genius,” Penelope said with an excited smile.

Emily looked over to her girlfriend. So much for date night.

———

Without much questioning about why they were building a blanket fort, the team got to work. In college, sometimes things just happened. Impromptu blanket forts were par the course. In their defense, any excuse to not spend the evening burying their heads in textbooks was a welcome reprieve.

It started with just a few blankets draped in the space between JJ and Penelope’s beds, but with Spencer’s instruction, a verifiable architectural marvel began to take shape.

While Emily knew that Penelope would be all gung ho for this sort of project, it was certainly amusing to see Hotch in his khakis and dress shirt crawling around on the floor like a child with the rest of them, tying off blankets and very seriously maneuvering the different parts of the structure.

Sheets were draped here and there, tied together to form ceilings and walls. Two chairs stolen from the common room, loaded with backpacks on the seat for support acted as the entrance to the fort.

While it was crawling space only, Emily had to note that there was a sense of awe when you emerged into the open space of the main fort-area. It was surprisingly big, fitting all six of them with ease. The key to the whole design was a curtain rod Hotch had stolen from the boys shower that lifted the roof up.

The design was strangely reminiscent of Baroque architecture, which she was sure was due to Spencer’s designs. This was a fact that Emily kept to herself. She always tried to rein in the ‘I lived abroad’ conversation points so her childhood could remain under minimal scrutiny.

Emily’s exhaustion transformed into excitement as she relished the time hanging out with her friends. Music played from Penelope’s computer as they worked, they began to work as a cohesive group, each member doing their share. It was nice to do something besides sit at her desk and obsess over memorizing facts and statistics, or figuring out the proper argumentation for an essay on a subject. Making sure that a bunch of blankets didn’t crash onto them was treated with the utmost seriousness, and the whole group was focused with intense concentration at their own tasks.

Spencer did, in fact, have literal sketches of blanket forts in his notebooks, but the details of which were fairly incomprehensible to her. While she believed that he did the math, his chicken scratch was just about indecipherable, and his drawing was little more than a few shapes on a page. Despite this, it was laid out on the centre of the dorm-room floor for them to reference.

At one point, as Emily stood on JJ’s wheely chair, she feared that the fort had all come crashing down as she lost her balance and grabbed at the blankets to stop her fall before tumbling onto Derek with a yelp.

“Sorry,” she muttered as she climbed back onto her feet and fought off the blanket that had wrapped her in a shroud.

She flinched as she realized she had ruined it all, a pit forming in her stomach. She looked at her friends in concern, but instead of yelling at her for her mistake, or shunning her for ruining it for the rest of them, they smiled at her and helped her up.

“It’s okay!” Spencer said cheerfully. “I know exactly how to reinforce that wall.”

“You okay, Emily?” Hotch asked, righting the wheely chair as JJ fretted over her.

“I’m good,” she answered, still confused as to why they weren’t mad at her.

Instead of making a big deal over the set back, they went back to work. Soon, the fort filled out and it returned to its former glory. Arguably, better than it was because they had draped fairy lights throughout the inside, making the space glow with a warm orange light.

Inside was filled with pillows and big enough for all of them to sit comfortably so it was a comfy lounge space. It was cozy and warm, the antithesis of the bitterly cold night air outside.

“You know what?” Hotch said. “This is a damned good fort, Reid.”

The group muttered in consensus. They all had piled into the space, and as the excitement wore off, Emily was wondering what happened next. What does one do in a blanket fort? She had vague memories of building one in her room, but she had just sat inside and read a book.

“I hear the RA’s storage room has a ton of board games,” Penelope said. “They pull them out for socials and stuff.”

“That’s all well and good, but we’re not asking Strauss to let us in,” Derek argued. “I still think she thinks we were responsible for that fire alarm last week. She’s been giving me the evil eye ever since.”

“Who said we had to tell her?” Emily said. “We could just… borrow… them…”

“I mean, they are for us to use, anyway.” JJ’s eyes had a mischievous look in them as she looked at Emily.

“That is true,” Hotch said, the scowl that was usually a fixture on his face turning to a smirk.

“That’s stealing, guys,” Spencer warned, as if they didn’t already know that.

“We’ll give them back,” Emily said with a shrug. “Come on!”

Penelope led the way to a dark wooden door on the main floor, it was labelled simply “Storage,” but the computer science student assured them that it was where the RA’s stored all of their supplies.

“It’s locked,” Penelope huffed.

“Do you have a bobby pin?” Emily asked her in a hushed voice. She wouldn’t have gotten this far if she hadn’t learned how to pick simple door locks. She had trouble with deadbolts but a simple latch she could probably do within a couple of minutes.

The blonde pulled a hot pink bobby pin out of her perfectly curled hair. Emily snapped it into two, bending one end into a longer L-shape. Sticking that into the bottom of the lock and holding it in place, she used the other side to feel for the pins that held the lock in place.

Emily could feel all eyes on her as she confidently knelt in front of the doorknob, the group keeping watch for her as she worked. No one questioned how or why Emily knew how to do this. She had her reasons.

This definitely broke all sorts of residence rules and if they got caught, they knew they’d get into shit, but no one seemed to care that much. They just wouldn’t get caught.

After a couple minutes, Emily’s hands began to sweat. What if she couldn’t do this anymore? She tried to centre herself. She had made it through infinitely more stressful situations in the past. It was the eyes of her friends on her that made her nervous. She was finally accepted by a group, and she desperately didn’t want to let them down.

Then, it clicked, and she was able to turn the brass knob easily. Emily made a noise of excitement, got to her feet and yanked the door open.

Instead of an empty storage closet, on the other side of the door was Erin Strauss, their RA, in a passionate embrace with David Rossi. Her shirt was unbuttoned and he was in the middle of sucking on her neck.

“Dave?!” Hotch called out, startling the couple.

Both groups stood stock-still, neither knowing what to say. While Emily had hid the bobby pins, she wasn’t sure who was in more trouble, them for breaking into the room or their RA for using the space for unofficial purposes.

The room was small and cramped, with a pile of poster board mostly obscuring the one small window that lit the space. Strauss had been hoisted onto the desk, her legs straddling the other student. Emily could see a shelf filled with the board games stacked on the left side of the room, but they seemed unimportant at the moment. While Emily had known about their illicit love affair, she had never expected to see it in action.

“Hey guys,” Rossi said after a moment, his unwavering confidence carrying on to this moment as he pulled apart from Strauss, who was furiously buttoning up her shirt and trying to sort herself out.

“What are you all doing in here?” she demanded, standing up and putting her hands on her hips. “This room’s meant for RA’s only.”

“Well,” Emily said, startled by her own audacity, “Dave isn’t an RA so…”

“We just came for some board games,” JJ said in her most diplomatic voice, despite clearly wanting to laugh at the situation, “then we’ll be off.”

“Take them and go,” the RA said in a strangled voice, her face beet-red and as she avoided eye contact like it was the plague.

Clearly not as embarrassed as Strauss, Rossi simply smirked, collected a few board games into his arms off of the shelf, then deposited them into Emily’s arms.

Realizing that given the circumstances, they couldn’t be picky with their choices, the stunned group thanked him then scurried away, back upstairs with their loot. The silence remained until they made it back to their floor, where they all burst into laughter.

“What on earth was that?!” Derek exclaimed.

“Rossi and Strauss,” Spencer muttered.

Emily and JJ made eye contact, remembering all those weeks ago when they had caught their friend emerging from the RA’s room down the hall in the middle of the night. They had known that Rossi and Strauss had hooked up that night, but had no idea that it was a whole relationship.

“I see it,” Hotch commented. “I mean, I don’t know your RA too well, but Rossi likes a woman with authority.”

Derek and Emily fake-gagged in an exaggerated manner at the comment.

“I think I need to bleach my eyeballs after that display,” Emily muttered.

“Ooo-kay!” JJ said, pointedly changing the subject. “It seems like we have most of the pieces to Clue… I think we could manage a game of that. We also have Scrabble, Yahtzee and Snakes and Ladders. Uh… also a pack of cards.”

“At least it’s not chess,” Emily said, thinking about her seemingly endless exam that afternoon.

“Agreed,” Spencer said.

“We do not have chess, no,” JJ said with a quizzical laugh.

———

After ordering a couple of pizzas to the dorm, they all settled in to play a board game. After a few minutes of debate, they decided to play Clue (or Cluedo as Emily continuously referred to it as). The board was laid out: it was vintage, with a teal and yellow colour scheme and some scuffs and rips showing its age. In their blanket fort, they were seated in a circle, all secretly looking at their Clue cards.

“Can I be Professor Plum?” Spencer asked before they had even gotten the pieces out of the box.

“Of course pretty boy,” Derek said, “I’ll take Mr. Green.”

“My sculpted god of thunder looks excellent in green,” Penelope flirted, choosing the white piece for herself.

“Did you know that in the original version of Clue, Mr Green was a Reverend, but they changed his name for American audience because they believed that the American public would object to a parson as a murder suspect?”

“Good thing you’re on our trivia team, Reid,” Hotch replied.

Emily was Miss Scarlet, of course, and was seated right next to JJ, who had chosen to portray Mrs. Peacock. Hotch claimed the remaining piece: Colonel Mustard.

Emily loved board games. Her nanny in France, who was a kindly elderly woman that Emily only knew as “Madame,” would play with her each Sunday after church. She has hazy memories from that time, but the warm glow of sunlight streaming into their Parisian apartment as she learned how to play Cluedo. Emily would always try to cheat, but knew better than to try to do so with her immensely observant girlfriend seated to her left, JJ’s hand resting casually on Emily’s thigh.

She looked at her cards and grinned. She had been dealt her own character, she noted, as Miss Scarlet’s name was printed in bold on the top of her first card. It felt weirdly validating to know that she herself was innocent. Also in her hands were the cards for the candlestick and pistol, as well as the observatory. She marked these off of her card and tried to gauge her opponents' reactions.

JJ was checking her phone with her cards face down, tracking the pizza’s arrival. Spencer was sprawled back, his long legs taking up way more room than was necessary, jotting down notes on some scrap paper. Presumably some statistics and probability for the possibilities of the cards that were sealed in the envelope in the centre of the board. Penelope smiled over at Derek and flirtatiously tried to sneak a peek at his hand.

After the initial rounds being dedicated to moving around the board, Emily finally made it into her first room: the lounge. There, she decided on her first suggestion.

“I suggest,” Emily said, in her most dramatic, formal voice, which was particularly suited to the role of Miss Scarlet, “that Mrs. Peacock committed this heinous crime in the Lounge with-” she hurriedly grabbed the candlestick, “the candlestick!”

She knew that it wasn’t the correct weapon, but using it would narrow it down to someone ruling out either JJ’s character or the lounge as the scene of the crime.

“Moi?!” JJ said, sounding almost offended at the accusation. “Your own girlfriend?!”

Emily grinned evilly at her, but internally she felt giddy. It was the first time she heard JJ use that word in front of their friends. JJ moved her piece into the Lounge. The others chuckled lightly at their antics.

“You have no alibi for the crime, Mrs. Peacock,” Emily said, “and I am merely making a suggestion.”

JJ glared at her, but said nothing. Emily turned to Derek, who was seated at her left.

“What do I do?” Derek asked, looking around the room, slightly confused.

“Do you have any of those cards?” Hotch asked.

“Yeah-” Derek said, moving to show his hand.

“No!” Penelope stopped him. “Just show one of your cards to Emily if you can prove her suggestion was wrong.”

He made an “o” with his mouth and sneakily showed Emily the Lounge card. Emily noted that, and that it was Derek’s card. Mrs. Peacock had yet to be proven innocent, and Emily gave JJ a suspicious glance.

She loved this game.

As the game progressed, Emily noted a few things about her opponents. A part of Emily was profiling her friends subconsciously, reading each of their strategies like a book.

Penelope always seemed to luck out on her dice rolls, covering a lot of terrain and gathering information like it was a cup of tea. But, she seemed to take it personally when someone accused Mrs. White of having killed Mr. Boddy and gasped every time someone made that suggestion.

Hotch seemed to take the game very seriously, and was at it like he was an actual police officer solving crime. But, it didn’t seem that he completely understood all of the rules, and definitely hadn’t played before, so he spent most of his turn grumbling as he skimmed the rule pamphlet.

Spencer, on the other hand, had memorized the rules, common strategies and probabilities of the different outcomes, so Hotch often looked over to him nervously as the boy wrote longhand equations in the notebook that he pulled out of his bag for the very occasion.

Derek also had never played before, and regularly made ‘accusations’ rather than ‘suggestions’ when he entered a room, frustrating Spencer to no end. But, Derek was smart and seemed to be picking it up as he went along. That was until he made the same suggestion twice in a row, both times making Hotch show him the exact same card. He asked Reid endless questions about specific rules, and more than once he made the boy double check in the rule book when Derek tried to make a rather unorthodox move.

JJ seemed to be the only one genuinely trying to have fun. She munched on the Cheetos that she stored in the bottom drawer of her night stand, and made conversation. Her strategy seemed to be exclusively focused on playing the game like it was the 1985 feature film Clue, playing the role of Mrs. Peacock with a fake accent and treating it like an actual murder-filled dinner party.

After a solid twenty minutes of gameplay, the pizza arrived. With minimal grumbling from Hotch, who was apparently on a roll, they took a break to eat.

“Did you see this?” Spencer said with his mouth full, lifting up the copy of the newspaper that he had grabbed earlier.

“Don’t get me started,” JJ grumbled and took a sip of her pop.

“What happened?” Hotch asked, the conversation piquing his interest.

Spencer explained—with the assistance of JJ who apparently knew one of the people involved through soccer—the entire scandal. Apparently, last year there had been very little interest in the leadership roles, so the President of the student government had simply waltzed into his role. He then hired all of his friends, his girlfriend, his roommate, and together they embezzled thousands of dollars of student funds.

“I can’t believe they’re getting away with this,” JJ muttered. “Is there no oversight?”

“It’s always the same,” Emily replied. “Who’s going to oversee them? The college? They’re corrupt too.”

“This sucks,” Derek said. “Wish someone good would run for government, for once.”

Emily shook her head in frustration. It all just reminded her of her childhood. Embezzlement, corruption and nepotism all were casual topics discussed over family dinner in her home. She had higher hopes for students her own age, would they not break the cycle? Or was it just a microcosm of the outside world?

“You should run Mr. Lawyer Man,” Penelope teased Hotch. “You could take any of these clowns.”

Hotch raised an eyebrow at her and went back to his pizza, brushing her off. Emily smiled at him. Penelope was right, he might actually do a good job if he set his mind to it.

The people that surrounded her now were nothing like her mother’s friends—or the kids she had been forced to hang out with when she was younger—they were genuinely kind, supportive, and seemed to like Emily for Emily. When she told them she was an ambassador’s daughter, they had been more concerned with the cool places that she had been able to travel to than whatever power she had. At college, Emily finally exhaled fully, slowly relaxing more and more into herself.

But, the topic of politics always set her on edge, especially since the semester was ending soon. Her mother had already begun to leave her voicemails about the galas, fundraisers and events that she was required to attend over Christmas break. She pushed thoughts of the future aside and focused on the warmth that surrounded her. With some music playing softly (a song that JJ liked by Vampire Weekend), the softness of blankets under her, and JJ leaning on her slightly as she ate her dinner, Emily felt at peace. She knew she could handle winter break, because she knew that these friends would be here when she came back.

After years of leaving a school midway through the year only to show up to some new boarding school or international school each time her mom was reassigned, Emily never had a chance to put down roots. But, with each bite of pizza, Emily felt herself becoming even more firmly rooted. Not to this place, but to these people as their lives became more entwined.

Once dinner was over, the game continued, and thoughts of politics left their minds. By then, Emily narrowed it down to the weapon (the candlestick), two rooms (the kitchen and the billiard room) and she was pretty sure that it was Colonel Mustard that had committed the crime.

She had a decision to make: walk all the way from the study to the billiard room, or risk being wrong by making an accusation. She was pretty sure both Hotch and Reid were on the right track, as the younger boy’s scribbling in his notebook had gotten even more intense and the older boy was beginning to look around suspiciously, as if the others were trying to read his notes.

She had pretty much ruled out Penelope, JJ and Derek as competitors, as the trio spent most of the time talking, and genuinely trying to have fun. Emily, Reid and Hotch were all way too into it, but Emily was competitive and this was her game. She wasn’t going to lose to Hotch, no way. Reid winning she could blame on his boy-genius nature, but Emily decided that Hotch was going down.

The two boys seemed to have come to the same conclusion, all eyeing each other across the board, the tension palatable between them as their competition became heated.

She nervously tried to move to the billiards room, deciding to play it safe. Better safe than disqualified. But, as soon as she made that decision, she regretted it as Spencer straightened up on his turn and said: “I’d like to make my accusation.”

“Write it down,” JJ prompted, as per the rules. He jotted it down in his paper.

Then, with bated breath, they watched as he grabbed the envelope out of the centre of the board, and read the cards. His face fell when he saw one of the cards, so he must have been wrong. He placed them back into their envelope and back onto the board.

“No dice?” Emily asked.

He shook his head.

“Statistically speaking that should have been right,” he grumbled. “My math was wrong.”

“Boy genius isn’t a good detective, huh?” Penelope mused.

A few turns went by, with Derek, Penelope, and JJ moving around the board or making suggestions.

Emily rolled the dice, making one square from a room. She sighed. She’d make a suggestion next round.

On Hotch’s next turn, he made an accusation, which he wrote down on a pink sticky note that Penelope had handed out when the game started. He checked the envelope.

Emily held her breath. She was sure he had it and that the game was over. She should just call it quits now. She went to bite her nails out of stress, but stopped herself, they were starting to get long and she wanted them to look nice.

A moment passed as Hotch compared his cards. After he saw the third card in the envelope, his expression revealed that was also wrong.

Boys, Emily thought. Always so overconfident.

She made a suggestion instead of risking it: “Miss Scarlet—er myself I guess— in the Billiards Room with the pistol.”

It was a gamble. If she was right, and the people who knew she had her own card and the pistol caught on, they would also know that it was the Billiard Room, because no one would be able to disprove her theory. If she was wrong, someone would have the card for that room, and she would know that the crime occured in the Kitchen.

The second seemed to be true, as Derek showed her his card with a small illustrated image of the Billiard Room on it. She was right. She knew what it was. But, she would have to wait until her next turn. She was going to win.

But, it was she who was overconfident, because as she was too busy preemptively celebrating her win, Derek casually made his accusation.

“Hey I’m right!” he exclaimed, holding up the cards and his own hot pink sticky note.

In his semi-cursive scrawl read: “Colonel Mustard, Candlestick, Kitchen.” These guesses matched the cards hidden in the envelope, and Emily’s own deduction that she planned to make on her own turn.

“You guys really thought I hadn’t played this game before?” Derek laughed. “I’ve got two sisters, board games were everything.”

“Were you hustling us, Morgan?” Spencer demanded.

He smirked.

“Should’ve put money on the outcome,” Derek said with a laugh. “I’d be rich.”

Emily threw her cards onto the table in defeat. JJ shot her an empathetic look, and Emily tried to stuff her frustration down to pat her friend on the back for the surprising win. He deserved it.

———

After the game concluded and the pizza had been completely eaten, the group parted ways, heading to bed, or for more midnight snacks or to finish up some studying, leaving JJ and Emily alone and to start? a game of Scrabble.

The board was ancient, and quite a few letters were missing, but with music droning on JJ’s laptop, and the soft fairy lights overhead, neither girl minded too much.

Emily looked at her letters: O, B, S, O, T, B, W and thought hard, rearranging the wooden pieces to try and formulate a word. After a long day of academia, and investing so heavily into the game of Clue, she probably had only one or two working brain cells and both were telling her to play the word ‘boobs.’

Her eyes flicked to her girlfriend, who looked absolutely gorgeous in the warm light. Her blonde hair almost glowed, and she had an adorable expression on her face. Emily couldn’t help but glance lower, thinking about the real world examples of her Scrabble word.

She played the word with a cheeky grin.

“‘Boobs,’ Emily?” JJ scolded. “Really?”

She sounded angry, but there was a hint of a smile tugging at her cheeks and Emily could tell the girl found it funny.

“I can’t help it,” Emily said. “I haven’t thought of much else since last weekend.”

She raised and lowered her eyebrows in an exaggerated manner, making JJ laugh and kick her lightly in protest.

JJ then played the word ‘throw,’ using the ‘o’ from ‘boobs’ to form her word, earning her thirteen points.

“I don’t think you can throw boobs, babe,” Emily said. “They’re usually attached.”

JJ rolled her eyes.

Emily made it her mission to find the funniest words possible, working extra hard (and missing out on some good points) in an effort to make JJ laugh. ‘Armpit,’ ‘meaty,’ ‘hoagie,’ ‘urine,’ ‘joint’ and her piece de resistance: ‘boner.’ All while JJ was playing incredibly normal, and often strategic words like ‘axis,’ ‘snow,’ ‘vain,’ ‘snag’ and ‘writings,’ hitting multiple double- and triple word scores on the way.

“This is fun,” Emily said, sneaking a handful of JJ’s Cheetos out of the family-sized bag next to the blonde, while she was distracted by playing her turn.

“I don’t understand how you’re winning,” JJ muttered.

Emily shrugged, “Guess I’m just a genius.”

“Reid? Is that you?” JJ joked. “Why are you disguised as my girlfriend?”

“Would Reid do this?” Emily said, leaning over toward her girlfriend and pressing kisses all over her face until she fell back. Then Emily straddled her, their lips meeting in a passionate embrace that left both girls panting.

“I would hope not!” JJ exclaimed with a laugh, making a face at the thought.

They laughed and went back to making out, with Emily careful not to disturb the game pieces. JJ sucked onto Emily’s bottom lip, making her weak in the knees and she struggled to support herself over JJ’s shorter frame at the motion.

“We should-” Emily tried to say between kisses, “finish the game.”

JJ kept deepening the kiss, going so far as to grab onto Emily’s butt to hold her in place on top of her.

“You’re trying to distract me,” Emily chided, “because I’m winning! I see right through your plot.”

She sat up and went back to her tiles before playing another funny word: ‘suck’ for twenty points. JJ grumbled,fiddling with her own tiles, as Emily collected a few out of the bag.

Emily was preening as she rearranged her own tiles and didn’t notice as JJ put down her word. When she went to play her next word (‘zap’) and only then did she see what word JJ played.

‘Love.’

It was there. Clear as day. Written vertically and connected to the word ‘snow,’ it was unmistakable. Emily looked at it for a long moment, trying to figure out what it could possibly mean that her girlfriend very intentionally played such a loaded word. Was it the only word that fit? Did she only mean that she loved the snow? Was she also reading into it?

Emily looked up, making eye contact with JJ. The blonde blushed and looked away, nervously fiddling with the necklace around her neck. Emily smiled faintly at the warmth that flooded through her, but alongside that, was the sharp pang of anxiety. Was she supposed to acknowledge that? Would that make it weird?

‘Zap’ didn’t feel appropriate when her girlfriend may or may not have confessed her love for her.

She played it anyway, deciding that making a big deal of it would just complicate matters. Besides, did she love JJ? She didn’t know. It was all so new. She liked JJ a lot. She definitely like-liked her in the traditional sense of the world. But Emily had never been in love before. She’d loved people before, Matthew for one, and her mother in a way, and she loved Derek like a brother. But being in love was a whole ‘nother ball game.

JJ won the game after playing ‘equinox’ for twenty two points near the end, beating any lead Emily had gained from her silly words. JJ deserved it in the end, as the blonde would sit and stare at her letters until they formed the most complex words that Emily had never even heard of. Emily’s eyes drooped and she was barely able to create three letter words by the end, while JJ was still surprising her with her vocabulary.

Emily shook JJ’s hand to congratulate her for the win. JJ grinned and kissed her.

Then, they looked around and realized two things: it was past one in the morning and Penelope hadn’t come back to the room yet and that all of the blankets that JJ owned were currently being used in the blanket fort.

“Can we sleep in my bed, tonight?” Emily asked. “I’ll help you clean up in the morning.”

JJ nodded but was in the middle of texting Penelope, wondering where on earth her roommate had wandered off to. Within a minute she got back to JJ saying: with derek! will explain tmrw!! 😘 🧚‍♀️ 😳

JJ showed Emily the message and both girls giggled. Emily saw that coming, but didn’t realize it would be a game of Clue that finally sealed the deal.

Exhausted but happy and relaxed after the game night, Emily and JJ tumbled into Emily’s bed and cuddled up together. Between JJ and Emily, the word ‘love’ was left unsaid that night, but Emily fell asleep that night feeling a new warmth in her chest.

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everyonewasabird · 3 years

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Brickclub 2.3.8 ‘Unpleasantness of putting up a pauper who might just be rich’

The Thenardiers really are society here in all it’s harshest aspects: the way they find ways to make the poor pay for being poor; the division between the children’s scorn for Cosette’s poverty and Cosette’s envy of their comforts; the way a rich man’s whims to have a child play are law and a poor man’s wish for the same is an absurd imposition. It’s all here in microcosm.

And once again, Valjean baffles society’s efforts at categorization.

I was struck last chapter by Cosette’s resilience and fearlessness in Valjean’s presence. This chapter, she’s cowering again, and we get a long description of the horror of her misery and fear. Once again it’s close to transforming her.

The expression in the eyes of this eight-year-old child was normally so forlorn and sometimes so tragic that it seemed, at certain moments, that she was in the process of turning into an idiot or a demon.

So far she’s staving off that transformation, as we saw in the woods, but it’s still encroaching. She needs to be out of here.

[Cut because this got long. Also, child abuse.]

I hadn’t previously caught how hard it is for Valjean to speak up on Cosette’s behalf. I’d pictured him in my memory as in control of this scene, and he’s actually only managing to bring himself to argue because of the harm about to be done to Cosette.

“Madame,” he said, smiling with an almost frightened look, “Bah! Let her play!”

Which makes perfect sense. This is society in microcosm, and it isn’t in him to outwardly rebel anymore--or even outwardly act like he deserves to be in society. Like Boulatruelle, his deference is suspicious.

Hugo doesn’t cast blame on the Thenardier girls. They’re just children, acting like children, and they’re lovely for it.

In the animal symbolism of the novel, Eponine’s play-acting sounds Significant.

“See, sister, this doll is more fun than the other one. It moves, it cries, it’s nice and warm. See, sister, let’s play with it. It will be my little girl. I’ll be a lady. I’ll come to see you and you’ll look at it. Little by little you’ll see its whiskers and you’ll get a shock. And then you’ll see its ears and then you’ll see its tail and you’ll get a shock. And you’ll say to me: ‘Oh, my God!’ And I’ll say to you: ‘Yes, Madame, that’s my little girl and she’s like that. Little girls are like that these days.’”

I never know exactly what to do with cats. They’re positive in this text, but what do they mean? I suppose they’re something that’s both harmless and not exactly tame like dogs are, capable of catching mice to fix God’s errors--a symbol of revolution--and capable, in a pinch, of transforming into lions. The people of Paris were cats in 1817 and presumably still are.

The child-that-is-secretly-a-cat also has, at least visually, some echoes of Little Red Riding Hood for me (”What big ears you have, Grandma!”) It’s a cat, not a wolf, but still. That story seems relevant to the story we’ve just come from, where our young werewolf child met a stranger in the woods and brought him home.

I just looked up whether Little Red Riding Hood would have been a cultural touchstone here, and of course it was--Perrault wrote it down in 1697.

Wikipedia also recorded this quote from Perrault about its moral:

From this story one learns that children, especially young lasses, pretty, courteous and well-bred, do very wrong to listen to strangers, And it is not an unheard thing if the Wolf is thereby provided with his dinner. I say Wolf, for all wolves are not of the same sort; there is one kind with an amenable disposition – neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids in the streets, even into their homes. Alas! Who does not know that these gentle wolves are of all such creatures the most dangerous!

Little Red Riding Hood may not really be something the text has in mind right now, but that sure sounds relevant to what’s just happened. A littler girl went into the woods alone amid talk of wolves, met a stranger, and took him home. (It also applies well to Fantine, alas. But Valjean is a very different kind of gentled wolf.)

Hugo has some thoughts to share about women and I don’t like them at all. I’m skipping them, I don’t feel like fighting with Hugo right now.

Cosette “vaguely listening” and picking up “a few words here and there” as Mme Thenardier insults her and says her mother abandoned her is more heartbreaking than if she’d been listening intently. It gives a sense that either there’s nothing particularly new in these statements, or else Cosette doesn’t feel invested in them because they don’t contain the information that really matters to her, which is whether or not to expect imminent physical violence.

Or.... nope. I definitely read that wrong.

By “vaguely listening” Hugo meant “dissociating.”

Because the scene that follows is:

Meanwhile the drinkers, all three-quarters sozzled, were singing their dirty song again, jollier than ever. It was an off-colour story in very bad taste in which the Holy Virgin and the Infant Jesus both featured. Mother Thénardier had wandered off to join in the outburts of hilarity. Cosette, under the table, was watching the fire, which was reflected in her staring eyes; she had again begun to rock the sort of swaddled doll she had made, and while she rocked it, she sang in a low voice: “My mother is dead! My mother is dead! My mother is dead!”

The only versions of holy motherly love that have trickled down to her are corrupted into near unrecognizeability. Her eyes are full of flames, another hint of that demonic transformation under duress that she’s still skirting the edges of.

There are a couple of ways to read “my mother is dead.” I kind of suspect that Cosette, like last time transformation threatened, is grimly hanging on to her sense of herself and the dim bright side: her mother wasn’t a bad woman who abandoned her, the only reason she is isn’t here is because she’s dead. Cosette claimed to Valjean not to have a mother, but it’s clear she has complex feelings on the subject that she can’t articulate. These lines feel like such an act of faith, actually: It’s Cosette believing, against all evidence, that her mother’s love for her is real, that she would still come if she could.

And she follows that with an act of such courage and hope and defiance: she steals the doll and is enraptured by it for a quarter of an hour. She stays human. She isn’t beaten yet.

She must know she’s going to pay for this--but she would pay worse for giving up hope, too, or for giving in to the thing that’s trying to turn her demonic.

Fuck, she’s fighting so fucking hard. Valjean is beaten down by society’s expectations of him, but Cosette isn’t. Holy hell, I love her so much.

The retribution of society in the person of the Thenardiess rains down on her, of course. It says she sobs, which is one more way in which she isn’t Valjean in the bagne--she can still cry when she’s sad.

And Valjean is also near tears. We know he wept when he was being shackled fo the bagne the first time, and we know he hadn’t wept any time between then and the bishop’s mercy. I’m not sure we’ve seen him weep any time since.

There’s so MUCH in the fact that he’s watched all this happen. He was worse off than she was when he showed up here--beaten down, hopeless, almost like he was after leaving the bagne the first time.

We never hear directly what the bagne did to him the second time--but we can see it. And it’s a lot like what it did the first time.

And instead of being saved by the bishop, he’s being saved by Cosette. We watch him becoming a parent over the course of this chapter.

Cosette doesn’t touch the doll. Valjean puts the doll’s hand in hers.

And that thing about Cosette being irrepressible--as soon as someone is kind, she becomes a kid again, like she’s been waiting for it all along. Because, she probably has. Shoujo Cosette isn’t wrong about the way she seems to have been waiting all along for her mother to come for her.

“I’ll call her Catherine.” Oh, my heart. Unlike post-bagne Valjean, she’s so very ready to be saved.

Valjean after sitting still a long time rises up suddenly in a sentence structure that feels like his sudden decision making at the bishop’s. Once again, he looks down at sleeping people, this time on Cosette.

She left her shoe out, because she still believes the good fairy will come. And Valjean does come.

I didn’t expect this to feel like Valjean at the bishop’s, but it IS. The transformation Cosette is resisting is one he’s more or less suffered again.

She saves him the way the bishop did.

I love them.

#brickclub #lm 2.3.8

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fuckyeahisawthat · 4 years

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@ignisentis replied to your post:

I read some reviews and also found it fascinating that so many reviewers seemed to miss the overall arc of the show and what it was trying to do with narrative expectations. There were some I read that barely even mentioned Primo, and that was so confusing because he’s such a big part of the show! He’s a main character, for goodness sake! (Which I was pleasantly surprised by when I watched the show. I had no idea that role would be so big and so compelling.)

I do also wonder if being able to binge the series all at once makes those themes more obvious, but dang, it did feel pretty clear by halfway through the show, especially by the Silenzio episode where you’re partially rooting for Little Paul to escape and partially rooting for Primo to catch him again and that doesn’t feel like competing desires. It’s so well done!

Ha guess who watched Silenzio (episode 5) again last night and needs to yell about it. It’s hard to pick a favorite episode of Trust because so many of the things I like about it are, like, thematic statements and plot and character arcs that span multiple episodes. But also...Silenzio is my favorite episode. It’s definitely the place where I went from “hey this is fun” to “holy FUCK this show is brilliant.”

In addition to being just...masterfully executed suspense from start to finish, I think it does exactly what you’re describing in terms of allowing us to sustain emotional investment with multiple characters who are directly opposed to each other, which is really challenging to do and requires both great writing and great performances to pull off. It’s sort of a microcosm of what I was talking about in this longer post.

The reason this episode works so well is that we understand the stakes for everyone involved. The stakes for Paul and Angelo are fairly obvious, and if we had any doubt, Angelo spells it out for us early in the episode. If they’re caught, he’ll be killed, and Paul will, at best, be recaptured by violent people who are now extremely angry at him. And in this episode we get to see exactly how scary Primo can be when he’s angry, in a way that’s different from his other violent set pieces so far. In the sunflower field he is relaxed and stylish and funny, and we’re invited to find his competence with violence enjoyable to watch. In Silenzio he is just dead terrifying. (In addition to the whole “hunt you down like an animal” bit, let us not forget that he starts the episode being ready to straight up set someone on fire.) So we have a hope and a fear for Paul and Angelo that are very well-defined.

But we also understand the stakes for Primo. He has literally just convinced his uncle that they can pull this off, and now they have nothing but problems. They’ve gotten an insulting ransom offer. The kidnap victim ran off, due to Primo’s underlings disobeying him and the fact that Primo was passed out drunk at a gas station overnight. (Granted, if he had come back to the house immediately after realizing the gas pump was locked, he probably would have caught Paul and Angelo in the act of escaping and killed them both that night, which would have been a much bigger mistake...but the characters haven’t come to that conclusion yet.) Primo doesn’t look particularly competent in Salvatore’s eyes at the beginning of the episode, and that’s part of what fuels the maniacal intensity with which he pursues them.

I have a writing teacher who said that the way we get to know characters in dramatic writing is by giving them a problem and watching how they solve it. And we get to know a lot about Primo in this episode. Despite what Salvatore might think, we get to see his competence--he says he is going to find them, and he goddamn well does. We get a sense of his greater ambitions for the first time. And we see the absolutely ferocious single-minded stubbornness with which he can pursue something (or someone) when the stakes are high for him. For me, this was the episode where I got convinced, oh, yeah, this is the person who can get John Paul “Not One Single, Solitary Cent” Getty to pay the ransom.

To me this episode always has such a sense of fatalism to it, because it’s about how every single character is trapped by the violence of their situation. For Angelo the choices are help Paul and risk his own life, or become an accessory to murder at seventeen. That’s how their world works. At the same time we know that Primo has to respond to disobedience with violence, because that is also how their world works. We know from the start that Paul and Angelo are doomed, if only because we know we’re only halfway through the series. But they manage to just barely escape getting caught so many times, and that little bit of hope for them pulls us into the tension really effectively. And they’re able to sustain that tension until, like, the literal last thirty seconds of the episode, and then resolve it in the most violent and dramatic fashion possible. And while the ending is tragic and horrifying, it’s also (to me at least) weirdly satisfying in a narrative sense, in the way that releasing that tension is always going to be satisfying after an entire episode of buildup. Trust is extremely good at setup and payoff, and the end of that episode is one hell of a payoff. It’s a grim payoff, but it’s one that feels like it fits the plot and the tone and the themes of the story.

#trust fx #primo nizzuto #screenwriting #suspense #violence #fwiw it's worth i watched the show 1-2 episodes at a time and definitely not over the course of 10 weeks #but some of this stuff just seems so obvious to me??#and if you're a professional film critic isn't it...like...your job to pick up on these things??#also uhh this is definitely the episode where i went...oh no....i have a primo problem #which seems weird because he's TERRIFYING but he is also just extremely compelling in this episode

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ranma-rewatch · 4 years

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Episode 7: Enter Ryoga, the Eternal ‘Lost Boy’

Hey, it’s Ranma Rewatch, I’m on episode 7, and I don’t want to waste too much time with the preamble. I am super excited for this episode, my boi is here, I really hope it holds up, see you after I watch it again!

That wasn’t exactly how I remembered it, but not in a bad way. The episode starts with a short scene that has become pretty freaking iconic, and has been sampled in dozens, if not hundreds, of AMV’s: A man cloaked from head to toe, walking through a desert, his eyes barely visible under goggles. It is a really cool shot that catches the eye right away.

We cut from that to that same person approaching a small village, deciding to throw off his concealing clothes to reveal his typical yellow and green outfit, with a bandanna around his head and an umbrella on his back, which he takes out to slow down his descent when he jumps off a cliff. This village happens to be being attacked by a huge wild boar, wrecking everything in its way, but this fellow is able to stop the animal with little effort and send it flying. When the grateful villagers approach, he only has one question for them: where is Furinkan High School?

At first they don’t understand the question, until they look at what he has for a map and realize it’s of Tokyo. The problem is, this young man is on Shikoku, a completely different island in the archipelago. They point him in the right general direction, and he reveals before the scene ends that he is specifically trying to find Ranma Saotome.

Speaking of the show’s titular character, we get a small scene of him in his cursed form being blackmailed by Nabiki into wearing women’s clothes because all of his stuff is in the wash. After that, we get another scene of the mysterious umbrella-wielding stranger asking someone for directions to Furinkan High School, but this time he’s in Hokkaido. Once again a completely different island, only this time on the opposite end. Fun fact: Hokkaido was the inspiration for Sinnoh in Pokemon!

We get another small cut-away to Ranma in various outfits, then another of our new character somehow ending up back in that village he was in earlier. The point is being made clear to us: he is terrible at getting where he wants to go, but is also so inhumanly strong and resilient that he has no trouble surviving in the wilderness in the process.

What seems to be the next day, he finally gets to where he’s going, just as school is letting out for the day. Ranma is being chased by Akane for something, though we don’t know exactly what. (Of course, we know their dynamic well enough by now to know it’s almost certainly something Ranma did to annoy her.) The newcomer slams into the ground where Ranma is landing at the same time, leaving a crater in the cement from the force of his landing, all while screaming how Ranma has to die.

The problem is, Ranma has no clue who this guy is, which pisses him off to know end. Even after he brings up that his vendetta has something to do with Ranma never showing up for a duel, Ranma still struggles (and fails) to remember this guys name, but luckily he gives it to Ranma anyway: Ryoga Hibiki. They went to Junior High together, and they’d agreed upon a duel, but it never happened because Ranma wasn’t there when Ryoga arrived.

Now, Ranma protests that he waited in the agreed upon empty lot for three days before taking off for China with his dad, which is honestly more time than most people would have waited. As we already know though, Ryoga can’t seem to get anywhere quickly, so he got there on the fourth day. Oh, and the lot was right behind his house.

The crowd of students who only moments before considered him with awe over his fantastic martial arts abilities are now looking at him like a buffoon, and Ryoga is ready to get his revenge on Ranma already. But Ranma puts a pause on that, runs out, and comes back with a bunch of different kinds of bread. Why? Because bread was the reason for their duel in the first place. Their school was only for boys, and getting food at lunch was a nightmare. Ranma ended up snatching the last piece of bread just before Ryoga could get it time and time again, and all the bread he brought was one of each type he’d taken years before.

But Ryoga doesn’t care about that, making it clear that the bread isn’t something he cares about anymore, that Ranma has put him through hell, even if Ranma has no clue what he’s talking about. But before they can get a proper fight going, Ranma runs away, losing Ryoga enough that when he starts busting up the school looking for him, he ends up going the wrong way and out of the area entirely, leaving Ranma and Akane to wonder where he went. We do get to see where before the episode ends: once again back in that village that had the boar problem, where he gets a meal before running out into the evening to find Ranma once more.

Like I said before, this episode wasn’t entirely how I remembered it. Namely, there was a lot more humor than I remembered. For the most part, that’s not a bad thing, there was actually some really good comedy, and I don’t feel like it trampled over the more serious parts of the episode.

If it isn’t clear, I am going to say right now that I did still love this episode. The animation was really on-point, some of the visuals of Ranma darting around people or the brief combat he gets with Ryoga just looks beautiful. Also, even though we don’t get a fight between the two just yet, it’s already solidly communicated, through Ryoga easily beating the boar, barreling through steel barriers, and hitting the ground so hard it destroys concrete, that he is strong as hell.

As much as I love the opening desert shot, I actually think my favorite part of the episode is some of the conversation between Ranma, Akane, and Ryoga. Ranma straining his brain to remember who Ryoga is killed me. It was weirdly relatable too, I’m sure many of us have run into someone who obviously knows us, while we can’t even remember how we know them, let alone their name. The fact Ranma actually specifically bought one of each bread he’d taken from Ryoga before was kind of cute, more than I expected of the usually flippant martial artist.

There’s also an exchange I’ve seen on Tumblr a few times in screencaps and gifs, and there’s a reason people love to share it. When Ryoga says he’s going to destroy Ranma’s happiness, there’s this shot of him freaking out, only to turn to Akane and blankly ask if he is happy, to which Akane doesn’t understand why he’s asking her. They take such a trope-y line from a character seeking revenge and turn it around into a really good joke.

There was also a really interesting thing I noted in terms of translation. After hearing about the string of times Ranma stole bread from Ryoga, Akane makes an analogy to why it mattered so much, but it’s different from dub to sub. In the English Dub, she says the straws broke the camel’s back, a common phrase that seems to fit the situation. But in the English Sub, she says (loosely remembering) “enough dust can make a mountain”, and I think that actually fits much better. After all, we soon learned that the bread isn’t really why Ryoga is angry, but once you do know everything that happened that led to Ryoga’s rage, that analogy fits perfect: it isn’t so much one specific event, as a collection of small events that collected into an enormous vendetta.

All my compliments aside, I did have some issues with the episode. Some of the comedy didn’t really work for me, and that was most true with the early scenes of the Tendo girls trying to dress Ranma in Akane’s clothes. Some parts did make me chuckle, but on the whole the mini-plot made me uncomfortable. Primarily because, as I’ve said before, I feel like the best way to look at Ranma’s cursed form is as a trans man. Even though his body has changed, his gender hasn’t, he’s still a man. The scene has Ranma protesting again and again that he is a man, even as they try to dress him as a woman. The idea of some cisgender folks trying to force a trans man into women’s clothes just...isn’t very funny to me. It’s kind of terrible, at least from a more queer perspective. That complaint done, let’s do the character spotlight.

Oh come on, who else did you think I was going to do? If it isn’t clear yet, Ryoga Hibiki is my favorite character in the series, and he has been since I was a teenager. Who knows if that will remain true this entire watch-through, but so far I’m not liking him any less. I’ll get into why, but first let’s talk about his voice actors.

The voice actor I’m more familiar with, his English one, is Michael Donovan. Like most of the actors for this dub, he’s someone who worked with the Ocean Group for a lot of series around this time period. That said, if you’re a fan of the Fate franchise, he has done some voices in Ufotable’s recent anime adaptations, playing Risei Kotomine and Zouken Matou. In Japanese, his voice actor is one Kōichi Yamadera, and he continued the pattern of voice actors who are well-known in Japan for dubbing English works. He’s most well-known for dubbing over Jim Carrey in a lot of movies, but he’s done a ton of others as well. In anime, some of his notable roles include Spike Spiegel, Beerus in all the recent Dragon Ball movies and anime, and Gentle Criminal in My Hero Academia. Seriously, diving into this guy’s list of roles is like swimming in an ocean of great roles.

So, how do they do? Well, so far I’d say I like both of them a lot, but they do play Ryoga differently. At his core, Ryoga is actually kind of a perfect microcosm of the tone of the series itself. Ranma 1/2 is simultaneously a shonen battle anime, a romantic harem series, and a wacky comedy. Ryoga is someone who takes himself very, very seriously. His desire for vengeance against Ranma isn’t a joke, and neither is his ability as a martial artist. But he’s also a doofus who ends up crossing the length of Japan several times because he can’t follow directions properly and the reasons (so far) for his hatred of Ranma are completely laughable.

I wouldn’t say that Michael Donovan’s performance lacks seriousness, in fact when he wants Ryoga to sound menacing I think he does it well, but on the whole he leans more heavily towards the comedic parts of the character. Meanwhile, Yamadera’s Ryoga hasn’t really sounded silly once to me. He plays the character dead straight, and let’s the comedy come through in the contrast between that demeanor and the circumstances around him. We’ll have to see as we go, but I actually might be preferring the Japanese performance so far, a rarity for me.

Okay, so, why do I love Ryoga so much? There are SO many reasons, many of which I won’t go into just yet because I’ll save them for when they appear in-series. But there is still a lot shown in this episode that I feel I can discuss. To start with, I adore his design. I don’t mean the cloak and goggles, though those are absolutely awesome, I’m referring to his standard mode of dress. The yellow and green as a color scheme, with accents of black to top it off, is something really unique. I don’t know enough about art to really articulate why, but I just love every touch of his design. My favorite small touch has to be the yellow strands wrapping around his lower legs, clashing with his otherwise dark green lower half. I have no clue what they’re supposed to be for, but they just add something, almost making him look more rooted to the spot of wherever he’s standing, more solid.

That is a good word to use for Ryoga in general. Even though we haven’t gotten to see him in a proper fight just yet, we’ve seen quite a lot of evidence of his main attributes. In Dungeons & Dragons terms, Ryoga is making out his Strength and Constitution. He hits like a truck and he can be hit by a truck without slowing down. I love that because it contrasts so perfectly with Ranma’s strength: his speed and precision. I adore it when rival characters actually have qualities that make the fights between them more interesting from the contrast, and Ryoga fits the bill there quite well. He’s also a good foil in terms of personality: Ranma is easy going, likes screwing with people, and is quite quick-witted; Ryoga has a hot temper and a long memory for grudges, hates it when people trick him, and tends to let his emotions do the thinking for him.

I will say it feels like his character has some classic Early Installment Weirdness, as he uses his umbrella quite a bit in this episode. If I remember correctly, after his introductory arc, he doesn’t use his umbrella much at all for the rest of the show, preferring to rely on his fists. It definitely feels like they hadn’t quite nailed the character completely yet, if that makes any sense.

Ryoga is also doing that thing where he’s seeking revenge and really angry, but refuses to talk about why, drawing out the mystery as long as possible. While that trope can become annoying, I don’t really mind it in this case. This isn’t a situation like Godot from Ace Attorney, where Ryoga is purposefully hiding it for some grand plan or something, or to teach a lesson. Ryoga doesn’t go into specifics because A) he thinks Ranma should already know; B) Ryoga is very mad; and C) he doesn’t want anyone else to know his secret. I’m not saying it isn’t stupid that he doesn’t tell Ranma why he’s mad, but I am saying that it’s in-character.

Are you surprised that I adore this episode? You shouldn’t be, I’ve been gushing about it this whole time. Even with the parts I found more rough to watch, this is still my favorite episode of the series thus far, putting the rankings at:

Episode 7: Enter Ryoga, the Eternal ‘Lost Boy’

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around

Episode 6: Akane's Lost Love... These Things Happen, You Know

Episode 4: Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Episode 5: Love Me to the Bone! The Compound Fracture of Akane's Heart

Episode 1: Here’s Ranma

Episode 3: A Sudden Storm of Love

The big question is: will the next episode of this four episode Ryoga arc be even better? We’ll find out next time with Episode 8: “School is a Battlefield! Ranma vs. Ryoga”. See you then!

#episode 7 #Enter Ryoga the Eternal ‘Lost Boy’#ranma 1/2 #ranma saotome #ryoga hibiki #anime analysis #anime rewatch

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neriad13 · 3 years

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Favorite Media of 2020!

There was a large swathe of this year during which I was unable to concentrate on reading (as there probably was for a lot of other typically-frequent readers), so, as a result, I ended up listening to way more podcasts and watching way more TV shows. Not a bad thing, but boy did I read way less books than usual.

However, for the first time in a while, the amount of fiction I read was about equal with the amount of nonfiction I read. Last year’s reading resolution was to read more fiction, so...success??

I did read a lot of phenomenal fiction when I had the energy to do so this year.

Books - Fiction

The Martian - Andy Weir

This book is the hardest of the hard sci fi I think I’ve ever read. Every single aspect of it is minutely researched and calculated. The author literally wrote equations to write this book. The science is insanely impressive and yet...it never loses its sense of humor or humanity in the mix. In fact, they’re the thing that drives the entire story.

Warlock Holmes - G. S. Denning

Way early in the year I was strolling down the fantasy aisle at the library, when this cover caught my eye. I took one look at it, went “oh, this looks silly” and...proceeded to devour the entire series in a matter of weeks.

It is very silly. Especially when it’s pointing out something that was silly in the original. There’s something so satisfying about Watson immediately answering Holmes with the correct number of steps in their flat when he’s trying to make his point about how most people don’t pay attention to things like that.

World War Z - Max Brooks

Every single scenario in here could easily support an entire book. A park ranger whose job it is to contain the yearly zombie spring thaw? HECK YES. I’d read tens of thousands of words about that. A Chinese admiral who defaults, steals the government’s premier submarine, loads it up with the families of his underlings and takes to the sea for years to live in the maritime economy that has sprung up in a world where everyone is trying to escape the shore? That could be an entire movie on its own.

Every chapter was more creative than the last and as a huge worldbuilding fan, this book was so, so fun.

An Unkindness of Ghosts - Rivers Solomon

In which a queer, neurodivergent protagonist solves a mystery on a spaceship which is a microcosm of antebellum era politics! This had a beautiful, mysterious, wonder-inducing writing style and it was a joy to peer into the wildly differing minds of every single character.

Books - Nonfiction

Underland - Robert MacFarlane

In every chapter, the author visits a different hole. Basically.

It’s an exploration of caves, catacombs, mines, nuclear waste facilities and the hidden underbelly of every forest. It was fascinating. And fundamentally changed how I look at time.

Rejected Princesses - Jason Porath

After years of having enjoyed the web entries, I finally got my hands on the first book and was not disappointed.

There are the more entertaining entries, of course and the art is as charming as always, but what struck me the most were the more difficult stories. The deeper you go into this book, the more horrific it gets. The author does not hold back on the indignities suffered by the historical figures he writes about. It’s terrible...but also very, very illuminating.

The Gift of Fear - Gavin De Becker

This book - while maintaining all the essential information in it - could be pared down to one sentence in a sea of blank pages and that sentence would be: trust your instincts. End of story.

But in a world where instincts are either customarily suppressed or going haywire, it’s not quite that easy, which is why I’m glad there is more to the book.

I picked it up thinking “ha ha, betcha can’t help a person with anxiety who fears all the time already” and...what it actually ended up doing was giving me the tools to differentiate between real fear and unfounded fear. And did help with the anxiety quite a bit.

Fanfiction

Watch Over Me - cakeisatruth

A Bioshock fic from the point of view of a little sister who is learning how to trust and be an ordinary child again. Dark and sweet. An excellent combo.

All That is Visible - Ultima_Thule

An exploration of a minor character in a well researched historical context? That’s my jam! How did they know?? A Tron fic about what it’s like to be a female programmer in the 70s.

Graphic Novels

The Adventure Zone - McElroys + Carey Pietsch

Yesssssssss! It was a running-to-the-library type event whenever my library got a new volume in. The jokes are so good, the art is so lively and the ways in which they added the details that the podcast couldn’t necessarily get across is *mwah*

Trail of Blood - Shuuzou Oshimi

Hoooooooly shit, the art style of this one!! It’s beautifully detailed and expressive, sure, but the real draw for me was how it changes with the emotional state of the main character. There’s this sequence in which he’s consumed with anxiety at school and all of his classmates become blurry and unfocused, until they can’t be recognized as humans at all, that particularly sticks with me.

It’s a horror story about a kid who witnesses his loving mother push his cousin off a cliff for seemingly no reason and is then obligated by her to keep the secret, which is eating him from the inside out. It’s so good, guys, please read it.

Level Up - Gene Lien Yang/Thien Pham

A story about a kid who is haunted by his late father’s desire for him to become a gastroenterologist. It’s funny and touching and the ending gave me what I can only describe as a feeling of exhilaration. Y’know that feeling when something unexpected but not out of left field, perfectly in tune with the narrative arc and gut bustingly funny happens, all in the same panel? That one.

Film

Searching

This is a fairly standard thriller about a dad trying to find out what happened to his missing daughter. It’s also found footage...but not in the usual way, which was what made it so compelling to me. It’s told through the dad’s phone calls, google searches, social media interactions, news footage, security cameras and webcams. It was such a cool way to tell a story.

Train to Busan

There’s a lot that’s already been said about this movie and I don’t think there’s much more I can meaningfully add to that. Suffice to say that ya gotta take care of each other if you’re going to survive a zombie apocalypse!!

TV Series

My Brother’s Husband

As close to a perfect adaptation as a person can get (barring the entire conversation in English which was...oof). I was so happy when they took it a step further and showed Kana and Yaichi actually getting to meet Mike’s family.

Zumbo’s Just Desserts

I watched a lot of baking shows this year. Like...a lot. They were my much-needed comfort viewing for the year and this one was my favorite, even over The Great British Baking Show (which I LOVE). Why? Because the pastry chef for whom it’s named makes such bizarre and wonderful desserts and fosters an environment in which the competitors do the same. I’ve never seen anything like a lot of the desserts that make an appearance on this show. Every single episode was an awesome surprise and so help me, this show had better get a third season.

She-ra and the Princesses of Power

There’s also a lot that’s been said about this one, so I won’t say much more. Suffice to say: DAMN. That’s how you do an 80s toy tie-in cartoon remake.

Infinity Train

This show’s premise is probably the most unique I’ve seen in recent years. Its balance of comedy, horror and existential dread is also *mwah* I also love how much it trusts the viewer to figure things out on their own.

Primal

A late entry sliding in before the year ends! I finally got to watch the second half of the first season last weekend and it was EXCELLENT. The pacing, the brutal fight scenes, the adorable dinosaur antics, the animation, the quiet moments - *mwah-mwah-mwah-mwah-mwah*

The most emotional moment for me was the part in which the protagonists watch, with sorrow, as the rabid dinosaur who’s been trying to kill them all night dies an excruciating death.

Also it sets up a fascinating new plotline right before ending in a cliffhanger!! Another one for the ‘had better get a next season’ list.

Games

Night in the Woods

This is one that’s been on my to play list for a few years and I was so glad I finally got my hands on it. It’s like...The Millennial Experience (TM), the game. I felt so seen, playing it. The character writing was fantastic.

Prey

I don’t know why I put off finishing this for so long. I guess I wasn’t in the right alien killing headspace for a while?? Anyway, the setting is gorgeous, the alien biology is weird and cool, the ethics are delightfully murky and the interconnectedness of the station was really cool, especially in the OH SHIT moments at the end.

Podcasts

The Adventure Zone

I tried to narrow this down to one favorite arc, but found that I couldn’t do it. I love Balance for its comedy and creative energy. I love Amnesty for its drama and acting. I am loving Graduation for the depth of its world and the way in which the real story behind everything that’s happened is slowly unfurling. It’s a good podcast all around.

The Magnus Archives

Who obsessively listened to every single season while playing Minecraft in about a month? Surely not me, nooooo. Of course not.

There’s also been a lot said on this one, so I’ll keep it brief. I’ve seen things in here that I haven’t really seen elsewhere in horror. My particular favorites were the creepy psychiatric hospital in which the horror comes not from the patients, but from the denial of the doctor to believe them about their mental illnesses and every single thing related to the Anthropocene. The one with the Amazonian village made out of trash - CHILLS.

#tma #taz #prey 2017 #night in the woods #infinity train #warlock holmes #she-ra #zumbo's just desserts #a thought

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everydisneymovie · 4 years

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Review #37: Old Yeller

Post #41

8/3/2020

Next up is 1957′s Old Yeller

Enjoyment : [6]

I was very torn on giving this movie any more than a 5. While this movie is engrossing, it is also very placid. It isn’t boring, but the exciting scenes are spaced out just enough that it threatened to get boring a few too many times for my comfort. Once it is all said and done though, this movie engages you enough to see it through to the end, and there is enough effort put into the acting and writing that it isn’t without value. I think it deserves most of the praise it has gotten over the years, it was certainly one of the best Disney movies I have seen in months.

Quality : [5]

There isn’t much to write home about in terms of the nitty gritty film making. Some shots are reused to save time and I assume, to keep the animals safe. The camera does a decent job showing the action when moments get tense, and the music accents important moments. There isn’t anything glaringly wrong with the craft behind this movie, and the way the story is structured is actually rather smooth once you look at the theming. However I just can’t find any exceptional and so it just sorta lingers comfortably in the ‘average’ category.

Hold up : [4]

There isn’t anything terribly offensive about this movie overall, which is a huge relief. There is a very tiny moment towards the end where the father gives the younger son an Indian feathered headdress and he runs around with a tomahawk making whopping noises, but it is like 2 seconds and right at the very end. There is a noticeable softness to this movie, and I think this is 100% due to the core cast being a mother and two very young sons. There are barely any men around to strut around and make toxic comments and it ends up making the movie a real refreshing experience when compared to some of the other machismo movies on this list. The violence towards animals is lighter this time around? There are several scene where Old Yeller is clearly actually fighting a bear, pig, bull and finally a wolf. They actually let the animals like, fight and smack each other around and it really felt uncomfortable. However from what I can find most of the animals were trained and there is at the very least some editing trickery to keep the animals safe for more risky shots. Still, you are on thin fucking ice Disney I have seen too many animals die in your movies to trust you anymore.

Risk : [6]

I think the reason Old Yeller stands the test of time, is that it has a clear thesis from the start that all other scenes exist to support. It is honestly a little jarring to see a Disney movie actually have a structure and a basic narrative, since 90% of the movies on this list just meander about aimlessly and then end. The entire movie centers around Travis being without his father for the first time in his life, the expectations to be the ‘man of the house’ and his fear of the larger world. It is a coming of age story, and his relationship with Old Yeller is a microcosm of his acceptance of adulthood. He is shown to be hostile to others mostly out of fear, and when he opens up, even a troublesome mutt like Old Yeller can be a friend and ally. Old Yeller having to be put down at the end is a big narrative risk, and it actually serves a purpose for Travis as a character. This movie had a tiny nugget of a risk and it really paid off, and it even got me to feel something for the briefest moment.

Extra Credit : [3]

The movie is very charming in places, and the episodic nature of Travis and Yeller running around the farm solving and/or causing problems is rather fun. I liked that a lot of narrative questions are answered by the movie, and there is decent set up and pay off for certain element like the hydrophobia or the boar catching. I felt tension in some scenes and the movie ultimately works as a small little slice of growing up in the wild west and the everyday hardships of pioneers.

Final thoughts:

Good on ya Disney, you made a decent film. I think this movie is one of the better live action movies I have seen on this list, I still like 20,000 leagues and Treasure Island due to their larger scale and more bombastic storytelling, but for a small intimate movie about a boy and his dog this is perfectly fine. I feel like all those crappy westerns I had to slog through were practice for this. A smaller cast and a smaller setting was just what they needed. Old Yeller dying is a sad scene to be sure, but it only works because of how much we get to know all the little nuances of this dog throughout the film and how much he matters to Travis’s character arc. Old Yeller is more lovable as a dog since he bites and barks and knocks stuff over and steals food. He isn’t trying to be adorable all the time, he is a dumb flawed animal and learning to love others in spite of, or because of their flaws is a lesson Travis needs to learn as he grows up. I feel like Old Yeller is a perfect movie to show to kids when you need an introduction to darker and more mature media. It is a fun movie about hijinx on a farm, but it doesn’t really sugar coat anything the way you’d expect from Disney and I think that is why so many people remember this movie and were so effect by the final few scenes. I don’t think this movie earns a *diamond in the rough* award but it is still worth watching if you haven’t seen it before. It is perfectly fine.

Total Score: 24/50

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always5hineee · 4 years

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Profit Margin- Chapter 18: Tragic Flaws

Chapter warnings: mild language and violence

Word count: 1293

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Exactly three days passed before Ten came back. The others had told her that it was a sort of game for him. He hunted people like the rich hunted animals. It wasn't necessarily difficult, but he liked to take his time. Apparently, in the rare occasions when a catch escapes from them, Ten is the one to go retrieve it. Of course, hunting Hendery would be a bit different. With no way to track him and only the killings to follow, she wasn't sure exactly how he planned on accomplishing his promise. Still, each person she spoke to was completely unwavering in their certainty that he would pull through.

Two things remained constant that worried her across these days. First, the killing spree continued, each morning resulting in a new somber announcement regarding which large stadium or auditorium had been plagued with bodies. Second, Lucas had yet to wake up. While Xiaojun assured her that his vitals were still stable, he had not risen to consciousness. She could tell that the work was weighing on the medic, but all she could do was watch Lucas for small increments of time as he caught up on rest. They ended up in that same doctor's office together on multiple occasions, but both chose not to mention it.

On the evening of the third day, Ten returned. He walked in the door unannounced, not bothering to tell anyone he had come back or what he had found. He simply walked into the kitchen, putting a few pieces of bread in the toaster and waiting as they cooked. Y/N was the first to discover him as she came upstairs to grab Xiaojun something to eat. As acute as his senses were, he heard her walk in, even though she froze. Turning to look at her, he stayed silent.

"Hello." She spoke, trying to test the waters. She wasn't sure exactly where his head was at.

"Hello." He responded. Neither moved, both on the defensive. She stared into the darkness of his eyes, wondering what exactly he was thinking. Did he still want to make amends, or was he now furious, long past any sympathy? She had no way of knowing, no way of telling- until he answered for her.

"I'm sorry." That said it all. He didn't say for what, or explain himself, or try and make an excuse. He also didn't beg at her feet or make a long speech. That was it, he was sorry, take it or leave it. It summed up everything she had known about him into two simple words, a microcosm of his entire state of being.

"I'm sorry, too." She answered, realizing that she meant it. Things were too complicated now to worry about little things. he had no idea what he was going through, what had dragged him into this way of living, but she was in no place to judge him. His expression slowly changed from his regular, stone face to one filled with tears and regret. He strode around the counter as quickly as he could to wrap his arms around her, setting his chin on her shoulder so their heads were side by side. She could feel his body shaking a bit, but didn't mention it. After a few seconds, though, a new voice startled her.

"Am I... interrupting something?" Breaking away from Ten and looking to the other end of the room, she saw YangYang staring at them awkwardly. Ten quickly turned to clean up his face as Y/N spoke to the new arrival.

"No, you're fine. What's up?"

"Fun got a notification that the garage opened. He wanted me to come see if Ten was back or..."

"Or if I was trying to leave?" She finished.

"...Yeah. Anyway, we should probably go see him." Ten, now composed again, looked over.

"Oh. Should I bring Hendery?" YangYang's jaw practically dropped.

"You found him?!"

"Yeah, he's in the car."

"Just sitting there?"

"No, I have him tied up. Didn't want him slipping off, you know?" YangYang didn't even know what to make of that.

"You know what, on second thought, I'll tell everyone to meet in the conference room. You go and get him."

Ten took Y/N with him to retrieve their once-colleague. Whatever she had been expecting, this wasn't it. He brought her out to a parked black sedan, popping the trunk to reveal a very awake, very tied-up, very angry Hendery. As soon as his gaze fell on Y/N, his eyes shifted from annoyed and frustrated to completely crazy. His hands and feet were bound as one would normally see, but his knees, elbows, and mouth were all restrained as well. She looked to Ten with a bit of terror.

"What?" He shrugged. "I got tired of him cursing me out." Ten picked up his thin frame effortlessly despite his own seemingly fragile body. She could clearly tell who was the stronger of the two, which was surprising, considering that knife-fighting was likely more exerting. They brought him to the board room, where everyone was already waiting. Ten wasted no time shoving him into the room and against the table, slamming his hip into the edge. It clearly hurt, but not a sound escaped Hendery's throat.

"Oh my God!" WinWin stood to look at him, being the first to say anything. "You actually found him!"

"That's enough of that." Kun interrupted, a bit taken aback by Hendery's state. "Ten, if you'd be so kind as to untie him, he can take his seat." Eyes narrowing, Ten reluctantly complied in regards to most of the bonds. He undid the restraints on the man's feet, knees, elbows, and mouth, leaving his hands tied behind his back. Hendery shot him a glare as he moved to Kun's righthand chair, forced to kick it out from under the table in order to sit down. After swallowing a few times to get the feeling back in his mouth, he asked,

"So what exactly the fuck do you all think you're doing?"

"We might ask you the same thing." The leader cut in. "You make an attempt on the life of one of our own, steal half a million dollars in funds, take off on a killing spree with no contact or warning, and then expect us to treat you with the same civility and respect as we always have?" With this, his face turned to a sort of irritated confusion.

"Excuse me? I left to go find the person that tried to kill Lucas. He had broken into the building somehow and I watched him as he was leaving the stairwell. I didn't keep contact because I thought that if he had been able to breach our defenses, he could tap my phone as well."

"Why should we believe you?" Ten asked with a sneer. "You've never been the vigilante justice type."

"Because this person is clearly after us!" Hendery snarled, raising his voice. "Are you stupid? First they try and kill Lucas, and then they ruin the venue for our next concert! Someone knows what we're doing and is trying to fuck with us, maybe even kill all of us! How can you sit here with me tied up when that person is still out there?"

"And the money?" WinWin asked, stealing Ten's place in the hot seat.

"I don't know anything about the money, I've never been involved in that. We're wasting time." They all looked to Kun, silently summing up the situation. Would he believe Hendery? Would he throw the man in jail to rot, or worse? Not only that, bt she wasn't sure she'd be pleased with his retaliation to her and Ten should he be freed.

"Fine."

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oddlyunadventurous · 3 years

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BOOK REPORT 2020

I’ve always been a sparse reader but 2018 and 19 had me accelerate my reading habits to the point that I think I’ve read the most books this year that I ever had. I suppose I’ll count them all here, just to make sure!! I said something or other about the Moomin books at the end of last year’s Inkt*b*r so, this being the month of traditions, let’s make a new one by tallying up my literary “yays” and “nays” at the end of the season.

Video game text boxes don’t count, online publication articles don’t count, psych/aesthetic papers and 1000 page biosemiotic textbooks don’t count, but they have sure pursued me in my sleep during the year as well. This list is really mostly for my benefit (and no I won’t get a Goodreads account tyvm), so under the cut you’ll find a list of titles in roughly the order I read them, along with short notes. I’ve done longer reviews of these books elsewhere and I need not bore you with them here.

K. Stanislavski - An Actor Prepares (1936) I started reading this book in 2012, then dropped it because I couldn’t understand it at the time. Kostya attends acting school and gets lessons from The Director. He learns to sleep like his cat.

K. Stanislavski - Building a Character (1949) Supposed to have been published along the first one in a single volume. Kostya continues his lessons. A lot of thoughts on walking, gaits, eloquent speech, phrasing, etc. Both these books are wonderful looks into the author’s artistic life. It’s very heartfelt and down to earth, considering it’s quasi-fiction made to edutain. Very inspiring.

M. Polanyi - The Tacit Dimension (1966) A book on the origin of knowledge, the integrated performance of skills, the emergence of life and other phenomena in the universe, marginal control between levels of reality, the moral death of the communist regime caused by the unbridled lucidity of the Enlightenment, the responsibilities of science, and thoughts about open societies of the future. This is one of the two shortest books I’ve read in the list, it covers all of this under 130 pages and manages to do it well.

B. Rainov - Eros and Thanatos (1971) A communist propaganda book attacking western mass media and escapist culture. It gets no points for being correct, as the author mostly swiped the truths from french philosophers. Very variable in its intellectual prowess, almost as if it picks its arguments in order to push an agenda. Informative but also infuriating. Also expectedly homophobic.

J. Hoffmeyer - Signs of Meaning in the Universe (1997) A somewhat pop-sciency book about biosemiotics. Forgettable but also humbly written and explicative.

A. Noë - Varieties of Presence (2012) An unimpressive book about sensory perception. Noë’s theory on sensorimotor action is worth considering but the book is poorly edited and mostly spent arguing with peers.

E. Fudge - Quick Cattle & Dying Wishes (2018) A look into a registry of last wills and testaments from the period 1630 - 1650 in Essex. The book is about early modern people’s relationship to their animals and what they meant to them in life, as well as in death. Fudge’s argumentation is sharp and her style is modern. Being a scholarly book it is really overwhelming with the footnotes sometimes, but otherwise satisfying. One gets beautiful glimpses of family relationships, thoughts and feelings that people now dead for 400 years once held.

G. Márquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) The Buendia family get all their sons killed. The Banana Company sucks. People love each other. A lot happens, generally. It is a hundred years, after all. The upper class sucks.

K. Polanyi - The Great Transformation (1944) The Industrial Revolution sucked. England sucks. It reduced all its workers to subhuman wretches. Every single decision made after the empiricists made labour and land fictional commodities has been a band-aid to the essential contradiction that the market economy wants to annihilate its human host. Laissez-faire sucks. It caused WW1. Fuck everything. Fun book.

R. Coyne - Peirce of Architects (2019) Talks about architecture and the ideas of logician/father of pragmatism Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914). Informative about both. Brisk and not very in-depth, but to its benefit rather than its detriment.

R. Williams - Culture and Society (1958) A survey of the 18th and 19th century England, and the emergence of the concept of “culture” as defence against the horrors that the Industrial Revolution inflicted upon society. Consists of some two dozen outlines of contributors to the romanticist tradition, from Adam Smith, through Ruskin, to Orwell, their beliefs, contributions and literary works. Very eloquent and interesting.

E. Fudge - Brutal Reasoning (2006) A fantastic book about much: early modern views of the difference between a human and an animal, the Christian discourse of reason, the logical fallacies that lead to its implosion, the advantageous use of dehumanisation by imperialists in other to genocide natives, Montague and Shakespeare, and the ethical hell of animal murder that led Descartes to deem animals as machines so as to allow his buddies to perform live vivisections on dogs without feeling guilty about it (this is the real reason, don’t let anybody tell you otherwise). There is even space for an entire chapter about an intelligent horse who could tell a virgin from a whore and learned Latin at Oxford. This is my favorite book I read this year, so it gets an extra long review.

R. Williams - The Long Revolution (1961) A sequel to Culture and Society that’s worse. The start and end are brilliant but the middle sags. It contains some historical reviews of English cultural elements, like the newspaper industry, the Standard English vernacular and the realist novel of the 19th century, but honestly if the book was just about about the creative state (intro) and Marxism (outro) it would’ve been fine, if not better.

P. Klee - The Thinking Eye (1956 & 1964) Bauhaus boy in 1920s Germany! Love you Klee, xoxo. You really have to read his thoughts to understand his work imho. You can appreciate it just fine on the surface level, but his completely eccentric (though very self-consistently logical and sharp) views on art creation open a new outlook into his primitive approach.

F D.K. Ching - Architecture: Form, Space & Order (1979) A staple book for architecture students. Or so I hear. Steeped in gestalt psychology. Very good, though not necessarily stuff I don’t know already. Very nice looking pencil illustrations, Ching looks to be an accomplished technical draughtsman.

H. Wölfflin - Principles of Art History (1915) A strong contender for second place in the tier list. The book examines the transition between Classical to Baroque in Italy and Germany (and all the Germany clones, like the Netherlands). It is a systematic, precise aesthetic treatise that reveals much by conceptualizing and grouping characteristic art features in which the two styles differ, then explaining their bearing on their decorative content as well as the outlook on life that they embody. Lovely.

M. Porter - Windows of the Soul: The Art of Physiognomy in European Culture 1470-1780 (2005) A historiographical treatise about early modern views on physiognomy. The book deals mainly with the extant literature on the subject and tries to gleam what it could mean for the customs at the time - palmistry reading, occultism, persecution of the “gypsies” and the Christian scientific project of attaining meaning. Macro- and microcosms, as above so below, hermeticism, that sort of stuff. It’s an interesting read but it’s too long, the quality of writing varies greatly from chapter to chapter, and it is far too expensive. Wouldn’t recommend it.

S. C.Figueiredo - Inventing Comics: A New Translation of Rodolphe Töpffer's Reflections on Graphic Storytelling, Media Rhetorics, & Aesthetic Practice (2017) This is the shortest book I read, mainly translating Töpffer’s 1845 "Essay on Physiognomy" along with giving his biography and some other paraphernalia. It’s not worth the price for the content contained within, but Töpffer is the father of the modern comic book, so I thought I’d learn what his philosophy was. On that front, at least, very interesting! If only I knew French I’d save myself the trouble and read the original, which is now public domain.

D. Bayles - Art & Fear (1985) A useless self-help book. Not entirely bullshit but completely banal from all angles. Shouldn’t even be on this list but I did read it, so...

I. Allende - The House of the Spirits (1982) A child rapist gets a redemption arc. Well, kind of. All women are queens. Men are awful. The poor are wretches and it’s their fault. Oh no, the communists are going to take our land! Pinochet’s concentration camps sucked. Overall a better magical realism book than 100 Years of Solitude, to be honest. Very well written characters.

R. Arnheim -To the Rescue of Art: Twenty-Six Essays (1992) What it says on the tin. Wide range of subjects, from art appreciation, to schizophrenic and autistic child art, to gestalt psychology, to philosophy of science, to Picasso’s Guernica and the fate of abstract art, to reflections on the 20th century and the writer’s life in pre-nazi Germany and America. I love Arnheim, I’ve read many of his books and I’m glad I picked this one up.

R. Arnheim - Film as Art (1957) A book about cinematography, one of his earliest, actually, mostly a personal translation from an original German book he published in 1933. Somewhat outdated, but foundational. Not as informative to me but I don’t regret reading it.

G. E. Lessing - Laocoon; or, On the Limits of Painting and Poetry (1766) A book by a greekaboo about a fucking dumb poem and a statue of a naked dad and his two sons getting fucked by snakes. It’s misogynistic and authoritarian in several places, and altogether awfully full of itself. 100 pages of interesting observations stretched over 400 pages of boring Greco-Roman literary discourse.

L. Tolstoy - Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (1852, 1854, 1856) One story serialized in a magazine then later collated in three separate books. Aristocrat boy grows up in pre-revolution Russia. A very, very relatable coming-of-age story. Tolstoy is a lovely writer.

F. Dostoevsky - Poor Folk (1846) An epistolary novel consisting of letters between literally Dobby from Harry Potter and his maybe-niece, whom he wants to fuck. Starts bad, gets better by the end. A bit rough and tumble for Dostoevsky’s first, so I forgive him for wasting my time a little bit. A decent character study of the middle/lower classes, at least.

L. Tolstoy - Family Happiness (1859) An amazing romance novel for the skill employed in writing it. It is very short yet delivers so much emotion. Rather simple narrative at its core, but executed with such bravado one cannot help but be impressed.

F. Dostoevsky - The Double (1846) In which the Author starts swinging. A pathetic, neurodivergent old man gets used and abused by the people around him and nobody cares. Satirical and biting, better than his first.

A. Lindgren - Pippi Longstocking (1945) I last read this when I was 6 years old so I thought I’d refresh my memory. I remember disliking the book then and I can see why. Pippi’s kind of an asshole. Still very enjoyable to read. I know it’s meant for a younger audience’s reading level yet I cannot help comparing it with Tove Jansson’s books and how much better the prose in there is. Sorry.

***

I think that about rounds them up! That’s about 30 books, give or take. For next year I’m hoping to:

Finish Tolstoy’s and Dostoevsky’s bibliographies

Read more econ and marxist writing (low personal priority but i have to, in THIS economy *rolls eyes*)

Finish the Tintin and Moomin comics, as well as Jhonen Vasquez’s collection of edgy humor

Read more about botany and biology in general

Get started on Faulkner’s and William Golding’s bibliographies

Read more children’s books

Search for more Latin American fiction from the Boom

Read more psych/aesthetics/pedagogy literature, which seems to have become my main area of interest

Thanks for sticking till the end of the list, hope you’ve learned something and maybe you’ll pick one of these up if it took your interest. I don’t have to be a philistine just because I’m drawing video game fanart! Bye now!

#books #book report #reading #2020 #blogging #i'm busy reading i'll go back to drawing in a bit #not art

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metawitches · 4 years

Text

In episode 6, the worlds ended, thanks to Adam’s double apocalypse. In episode 7, we meet the new world. And tie up a few loose ends.

Recap

The episode begins with a twist on the opening voice over- a segment from HG Tannhaus’ science show from the 1970s:

Tannhaus: “What is reality? Is it singular in nature? Or do several parallel realities exist at the same time? To address this, Erwin Schrodinger constructed an extremely interesting thought experiment. Schrodinger’s cat. A cat is locked in a steel chamber with a tiny amount of a radioactive substance, a Geiger counter, a vial of poison and a hammer. As soon as a radioactive atom disintegrates inside the steel chamber, the Geiger counter triggers the release of the hammer, which smashes the vial of poison. The cat is dead.

“However, due to the wave characteristics in the quantum world, that atom is indeed disintegrated and intact. Both states are true until our own observation forces it into a definitive state of existence. Until the moment we check and see, we can’t know if the cat’s dead or alive. It exists in two superposed states. The attributes “dead” and “alive” exist simultaneously in the microcosm.

“But what if the simultaneous existence of life and death also applied to the macrocosmic world? Could different realities exist side by side? Could we split time and let it run in two different directions, and, as with the cat, induce a state of death and life simultaneously? And if so, how many different realities could exist side by side?”

Good question- how many realities could exist side by side? Is that the normal state of reality- for many realities to exist side by side, happily coexisting long term without judging each other’s existences, each accepting that sometimes the cat lives, sometimes she dies, and sometimes she chooses to leave the box closed and uncertain forever? That does seem like what the theory predicts, doesn’t it?

The famous cat, waiting for her life to go one way or the other.

HG Tannhaus presents the 2 potential states which the cat is superposed in- it exists as both a live cat and a dead cat at the same time, until an observer opens the box and forces circumstances in one direction or the other. The observer affects the outcome because of quantum entanglement.

A representation of 3 equal states/worlds/dimensions superposed together which arose from one moment in time, showing this is possible in the Dark universe, according to science expert HG Tannhaus.

In the Prime world 2020, Alt Ex Raincoat Now Emo Martha stands outside of Hannah’s house at the end of S2, just after Adam shoots Prime Martha. Inside, Young Jonas watches his Martha die and promises to make it right. Alt Martha goes inside- or does she? In split screen, one Martha runs into the house, while the other stops when Bartosz appears and yells to her not to go inside, Back to the Future-style. He tells her that Adam doesn’t want to stop the apocalypse and will kill her in the future.

Bartosz says that they’re all doomed because of Jonas/Adam, because everything is his fault.

Of course it is. At least some things are consistent across all of Space-Time.

As the black hole warp bubble forms in the sky, Jonas runs to the basement. Bartosz takes out the time sphere and begs Martha to trust him. He can save her and show her the origin and how everything is connected. Martha and Bartosz poof away just as the shockwave hits.

So good to have Bartosz acting normally again.

Time to note the next twist of the episode- sometimes we are seeing a 3rd world, which I am going to creatively continue to call the 3rd world or Tannhaus’ world. You can tell when it’s this world because widescreen black bars appear at the top and bottom of the picture. And HG Tannhaus appears.

Except in this episode, the jumps between worlds aren’t always marked by any of the normal markers that we’re used to. Make of that what you will- do some of the scenes apply to multiple worlds? Are we seeing Bartosz’s world sometimes? Are we seeing more of Tannhaus’ world than we realize?

Did the most recent surges in time energy fry the system in some way so that the boundaries between worlds are overlapping and more fractured than usual? Maybe the new connections that were made need a while to settle down? Usually, after an event like the end of episode 6, we’d be shown where/when travel has now been opened up to- my guess is that’s why we can see Tannhaus’ world in this episode. The connection to his world has been made or changed. We’d also usually be shown the travelers along with the new places they went, but apparently we’re assuming Martha, Charlotte and Aleksander are dead.

In the Prime world, in 1986 HG told Teen Charlotte that his son, daughter-in-law and infant granddaughter, Charlotte, died when their car went off a bridge in a storm in 1971. Baby Charlotte’s body was never found. That same night, two peculiar women brought him a replacement infant to raise. The “For Charlotte” pocket watch, a Tannhaus family heirloom since the early 19th century, came with her. Teen Charlotte met Peter, who came to town that day and eventually became her husband, on the day HG told her about her past. Both HG and Charlotte were given reasons to stay in town and stay settled when they were told the story of the accident.

In the 3rd world, in 1974, the clock shop looks much more like an inventor’s workshop than usual. HG works on a machine on a table late at night. It’s unclear whether he has Charlotte in this reality. We never see her, but he could be working around her sleep and then later her school hours. In S1, Prime Charlotte found a piece of the time machine chair room’s wall paper in the bunker and recognized it for what it was.

That suggests that on the Prime world, Tannhaus brought her with him to the bunker while he worked at night and the room was originally set up as a bedroom and playroom for her. The ownership of the bunker and cabin is murky, since we’ve been shown that the property also belonged to the Dopplers, especially Helge, during the same period. Bernd Doppler and HG were the same age and may have been friends, sharing ownership of the vacation/hunting cabin between the families.

The ownership of the cabin could be a bootstrap paradox- someone could have changed history. Bernd and Helge are Claudia’s allies, so it would benefit her to pass ownership of the passage to them. Encouraging marriage between Charlotte and Peter also accomplishes that goal.

Or we could have been seeing the cabin and bunker in multiple worlds all along, but it’s only become clear now that the timelines have differentiated more. In the pilot, Jonas’ timeline, Martha’s timeline and Bartosz’s timeline may have been identical. They could be living in entirely different universes by now.

HG glances at his photo of his son and family, then the scene switches to the Winden graveyard and the family’s gravestone. They died on November 8, 1971. Marek was born on March 20, 1947. Sonja was born May 26, 1949. Charlotte’s birthday was May 30, 1971. She was just 5 months old when she died. HG leaves a red knit animal on the grave for Charlotte.

Both Charlotte and Sonja were born just a few weeks before the Summer Solstice, the peak of the light. Marek was born on the Spring Equinox, one of the balance points in the year between light and dark, this one tipped toward light.

In voice over, HG says that it’s hard for humans to accept death and loss. “We long in vain for a way to turn back time. To reverse death.”

“But if time is relative and nothing is really ever in the past, and the simultaneous overlapping of different realities is possible, shouldn’t it then also be possible to bring back something that was believed to be dead long ago and to create a new reality in which the dead live again? If our life is defined as everything between birth and death, it exists there, ad infinitum. Could we succeed in cheating death by finding a way to bring back life, there, between time?”

As he speaks, HG goes to the Doppler cottage and down into the empty bunker. He must own the cottage on this world. He looks around the bunker thoughtfully.

The bolded question is the central question of the series and especially this season. There are several different stories about how time travel began on Dark. They all have to do with bringing someone back from the dead. Generally, the characters’ theories about the knot involve blaming someone who they believe shouldn’t be alive either.

The show’s focus on how guilty characters feel about this or that serves to distract from how alarmingly frequent murder and physical violence have become. When you combine this violence with the way Adam speaks about who deserves Paradise and pay attention to how few characters Eva saves from the apocalypse, it starts to look like a multi world genocide.

Prime world, 2021.

Young Elisabeth and Hanno work to clear the rubble from the passage. It can’t be that long since Hanno finished clearing the passage the first time, in the 1920s, so he has every right to be an angry guy. Adam couldn’t send him to the 1990s for some R&R for a few years first?

Of course not, Adam doesn’t believe in happiness or fun anymore.

They reach one of the Sic Mundus doors, which gives them hope. Later, while they’re relaxing, Elisabeth looks at the For Charlotte watch that Adult Noah gave her. She asks Hanno to tell her about Paradise. He uses sign and speech. “Paradise is free of pain and sorrow. Everything we’ve ever done is forgotten there. Any pain that we’ve ever felt is erased. And all the dead live. Adam will keep his promise. The passageway will open up.”

So cruel of Adam/Jonas to raise all of these kids on the dream of a beautiful world, then take it away from them. Such a timely storyline. Better living through chemistry and physics, y’all, ’til the artificially concentrated and combined chemicals turn into poisons that build up in every system on earth.

Prime world, 1890.

Adam/Stranger Jonas is working in his workshop, wearing a leather suit that looks like a hazmat suit, but of course it isn’t as sturdy. The cesium 137 is placid in its basin until he turns on the electricity. Once it’s been hit enough times, it turns into a blue-black cloud, but it remains unstable.

When Jonas goes to one of the lightning rods to adjust something, he gets struck in the arm by an intense bolt. It gives him a large burn. The energy surge probably would have killed anyone else. He glares at the stone basin where the God particle lives- it’s sentient, so given the way he treats it, it probably is out to get him.

Later, he finds Bartosz staring out the window in the one bedroom in 1888. It’s time for their regular blame Jonas session. Bartosz is angry that Jonas hasn’t reinvented time travel and all of 20th century technology yet, after two whole years in the 19th century. He’s wasting the best years of his life here in the past and he doesn’t think Steampunk is a good look on him at all.

Jonas reiterates that he knows he’ll get the God particle working eventually, because he’s already seen it working in the future-past, but Bartosz continues to be suspicious of his intentions. Jonas explains that he wants to fix everything, not just one event or one person’s problems. He’s the savior, okay? That’s bigger than their love triangle.

Jonas: “If the portal works, then we can use it to find the origin. The one moment that started all of this. And when we’ve found it, we’ll destroy it. And everything that arises from it. That is paradise.”

Bartosz storms out and takes a long walk in the rain. Of course it’s raining. Jonas makes a mental note to do something about this situation in the future, like get Bartosz a girlfriend or a hobby so he’ll quit being such a pain in the butt.

Still in the 1890s.

Silja arrives from the 2050s, wearing Alt Martha’s 1800s outfit. She hides her hazmat suit under some brush. Bartosz comes stomping by, still fuming over Jonas. Silja makes a little noise so that Bartosz will notice her, then comes over to introduce herself.

And Jonas’ Bartosz problem is solved.

I hope that Hanno, Agnes and Silja at least got to pick out which family members they wanted to date before the first cycles in which they were used this way. Because there is no other way to interpret how they are sent to Elisabeth, Doris and Bartosz and the way Agnes was bred with the Unknown. We never see Silja question her path, but Agnes expects Jonas to keep up his side of their deal (plus, she doesn’t stay with either Doris or Unknown). Hanno/Noah openly chafes at the expectations placed on him, and eventually rebels against them, even though he loves Eli.

2023, Prime world.

After 3 years of torture by blue lightning bolts from Jonas and Claudia, the cosmic egg has developed a transparent, protective outer layer, but seems no closer to becoming a time travel portal. Claudia and Jonas give up for the day and rinse the radiation off their hazmat gear in the outer section of the power plant. Jonas is super depressed and ready to quit. Claudia tries to convince him to keep going, because, well, he just has to. Someday, somehow, it just has to work, if they can keep up their team spirit. Jonas tells her he really doesn’t have any team spirit and walks away.

Of course he goes home. He stops in the kitchen for one last look at all of his emotional touchstones- the family portrait, the kitchen table where he last saw Michael, the spot on the floor where Martha died. Then he goes up to Michael’s studio, which has tree branches growing in through the skylight. A sign from his dad, the Sun King- choose life! Jonas looks up at the ceiling beam fondly, then goes about the business of hanging himself.

He doesn’t die. Young Hanno rushes in and cuts him down, sent by either Claudia or Adam. The poor kid has been doing hard labor in the tunnels for years, now he has to live in the barren cave with his child bride, and his savior can’t even be bothered to stay alive. He tells Jonas that he and Adam made Noah and Hanno a promise that the apocalypse had to happen so that everyone would get saved. “You cannot die.”

I think if Jonas died, Hanno would kill him.

He hands Jonas a gun. Jonas holds it to his head and fires. 5 times. Hanno takes the gun back and fires the bullet in the last chamber at the wall. Time and Hanno win this game of Russian roulette.

Hanno explains that Jonas can’t kill himself, because his older self already exists. A force or a person will always intervene. He tells Jonas that he and Elisabeth have found the passage, as ordered by Jonas’ older self. So now it’s up to Jonas to keep the promises made by his older selves.

When Hanno burst into the room, Jonas asked why he was there and if he was following him. After that, Jonas stayed silent. When they’re done with the gun, Hanno brings him to the passage to prove that it’s waiting to be reopened. Jonas stays silent for this as well.

Hanno tells him again that the passage will open up and then Adam will take them to Paradise. Before then, he and Jonas are supposed to become friends, until Hanno is betrayed.

It’s always worded that way- Hanno/Noah will be betrayed and Jonas will be to blame. Jonas is never blamed in the active voice and Hanno never notices. But Hanno is also one of the few who knew Adam well before he met Jonas, so he sees Adam as the real version. Young Jonas is merely the alternate.

Jonas is already tired of the burdens placed on him by people he hasn’t become yet.

And he isn’t even saving for retirement or a mortgage or his kid’s college or keeping up with the maintenance on that poor house so he can pass it down to the Unknown. His eldercare plan for his parents is pretty rough, too.

I’m thinking Jonas’ cosmic egg is also a metaphor for all of those core wounds that get buried deep inside and won’t budge, no matter what you do to heal them. They pop out occasionally as giant black time clouds or nightmares or ex boyfriends. They say that time heals all wounds, but even time can’t heal some damage.

Metamaiden says she assumes that “time heals all wounds” means you’ll die eventually anyway and then your problems will be over.

She was born with this cheery outlook, folks.

But you see- Jonas doesn’t have death to look forward to as an end to his pain, so he keeps zapping that poor time egg. It’s ultimately a circle of torture and self-loathing, punctuated by occasional suicide attempts. He didn’t even hesitate before he pulled the trigger on that gun, 5 times in a row.

In 1904, Silja gives birth to a baby boy. She tells Bartosz she wants to name him Hanno. Bartosz realizes that this innocent newborn baby will grow up to be the killer who brought him into Sic Mundus while posing as a priest and drug dealer.

In the 3rd world, 1974, Tannhaus hangs the photo of his son’s family on the bunker wall, mirroring the way Claudia hung photos on the wall and Martha made the family trees in chalk. The 3rd world mirrors the other two, but things don’t happen in exactly the same way or at the same time.

Tannhaus: “Fate is playing a cruel trick on us. Yet we will always believe there is a way to turn the tide in our favor. If we only want it hard enough. A person is able to pursue any goal, no matter how unattainable it may seem, over the course of an entire lifetime. No resistance, no obstacle is great enough to stop the human will in its tracks… Throughout the ages, isn’t this unquenchable thirst at the heart of any progress that is ever made? No matter what motivates our will, it guides us on our path. We will only be able to let go once we have finally reached our goal.”

As Adult Tannhaus speaks, he spends the 12 years from 1974 to 1986 building a time machine in the bunker. At the same time, he turns into Old Tannhaus. The machine is a large ball with even larger rays sticking out. When he’s done, it looks like a room size version of what’s probably in the sphere.

We saw a similar aging process mirrored with Gustav Tannhaus in the carriage, which had a prophet, the wheels of time and Charlotte’s watch, even if it didn’t technically have a souped up time machine. HG’s new time machine could be seen as a high tech variation on a wheel of time or a cosmic egg as well.

Forward to Prime world, 2040.

17 years have passed in the power plant and Hanno and Jonas have aged into their older selves. Hanno works with Claudia and Jonas on the God particle. At rest, it’s still a white cosmic egg, but when stimulated by enough electricity, it gradually turns black, then becomes the larger cloud that’s a precursor to forming portals. They all look hopeful for a moment as the cloud begins to smooth out into a ball, but it doesn’t hold the formation.

Later that night, Jonas and Hanno stand outside in the dark over a fire. Jonas wonders why the portal isn’t working.

Hanno: “Maybe Claudia doesn’t want it to work.”

(This is correct.)

He asks why Jonas trusts Claudia. Jonas asks why Hanno trusts Adam (Adam raised him). He tells Hanno that Adam’s Paradise is a lie and that he knows the portal will work eventually, because he’s seen it, in the future-future. Everything repeats itself, so this will, too, Jonas is sure that he can do things differently this time though. He and Claudia have changed enough of the components in the passage so that this time, he’ll be able to close it forever when he tries in November 2019, as Stranger Jonas.

Hanno confirms that Claudia told Jonas this. Then he asks what Jonas actually knows about Claudia. “She sometimes disappears for days. How does she know all the things she knows? She said that not all that’s here, should exist here. What did she mean by that? Claudia’s hiding something from us. We can’t trust her. I hope that you know that.”

A very pregnant Elisabeth calls Hanno inside for the night.

Alt Claudia to Prime Claudia: “He still doesn’t suspect anything?”

Prime Claudia: “No, he has no idea that you or the other world exist.”

Alt Claudia: “You must continue to guide him on this path. The matter must not function yet. You keep the knot up in your world, and I’ll keep it in mine.”

Alt Claudia pulls out the sphere, ready to leave. Prime Claudia stop her. She asks how Eva knows what will happen in the future and what instructions to give them. She wonders if Eva knows everything, every future. Has Alt Claudia met her? Alt Claudia asks who she means. Prime Claudia says, “My older self.” Alt Claudia says, “No.”

Prime Claudia: “I still remember exactly what she said. ‘If all this works, then our Regina will live.’ I’ve thought about it all these years. I just can’t believe that what she meant by that was that her suffering would repeat endlessly. There must be a way to untie the knot, without destroying all life in it. A way for Regina to live. Really live. I think neither Eva nor Adam know this path. But I’ll find it. In my world or yours.”

Prime Claudia takes out a gun and shoots Alt Claudia in the forehead. Alt Claudia dies. Prime Claudia becomes the supreme deity on 2 worlds. She picks up her prize, the Golden Time Snitch of Omniscience. Now she can figure out what the multiverse is really all about.

Because they’d never seen an Alt Old Claudia, Prime Claudia assumed she was meant to kill her. Claudias think this way. To be fair, so do Adams and Evas. They are gods, far beyond our mortal ways of thinking about murder and death. They know there’s always another version of the person, somewhere, on some world, and anyway, that person will be born again, next cycle, like nothing ever happened.

Claudia is assuming that at some point she changed the course of the cycles to bend toward favoring her Regina. And if that isn’t the reason Alt Claudia died in past cycles, well, it is now. If you ever think that changes haven’t been occurring over the course of the cycles, go watch S1Ep1 and any S2 episode again. The Windens are all very different places.

And with all the Claudia drama, we skipped right past the confirmation that she’s actively holding back progress on the God particle portal (“The matter must not function yet.”). She doesn’t need to hold Jonas back in 1888. The primitive working conditions do that by themselves. In the 21st century, they can scavenge modern materials. So she’s misdirecting him toward experiments that are ineffective, while she and Eva, and maybe Adam, work on other goals.

Swoop into the Alt world, focus on those darn scorched paintings. This scene takes place after the apocalypse in the Alt world, when Stranger Martha is aging into Eva, so it’s probably about 2040 there as well. Eva’s God particle apparatus is disassembled on the floor, so she probably lost it in the shockwave too and is trying to rebuild it.

The same scenario is being played out on all 3 worlds, in a different way on each world. As promised, no matter what, the three worlds are linked and the same archetypal events repeat between them. Family members die and get lost, going all the way back to the first Charlotte Tannhaus in the early 1800s, creating the desire to change the timeline. Time travel is invented and reinvented, repeatedly, by the same or different people. This is not a one time occurence based on a single sad event.

Tannhaus justifies following his Will with no restrictions by saying that wanting his son back so badly makes it okay. Claudia believes that saving Regina’s life justifies anything she will do for that cause, no matter who else she hurts in the process. Both arguments come back to Bernd’s advice to take what you want, because no one will give it to you. The flip side of that is the assumption that you are owed whatever you want and no one else’s needs or desires matter as much as your own.

When Prime Claudia enters, Stranger Eva asks if her alternate self is coming, too? Claudia says that Noah is watching her, so she couldn’t get away.

Note that she knows he’s suspicious of her and is limiting her movements because of him. When Charlotte disappears, Noah’s mental focus is conveniently removed from Claudia and his physical person is conveniently removed to time periods and locations Adult Claudia mostly stays away from.

Eva rolls up a blueprint for a time travel device and tells Claudia to give it to the other Claudia, who must then give it to Tannhaus to build. She asks if the Claudias understand why everything they’re doing is necessary and everything has to keep repeating. Claudia nods her head yes.

At some point, everyone in Winden will have been designed one of the time travel devices. I’m glad to see Martha get her shot. Does Alt Tannhaus also get blueprints, or does the Alt world go straight from their futuristic God particle portal design to the sphere?

Back in time to 1910. We aren’t shown a switch back to the Prime world, and for the first time all season, we’re shown the outside of Erna’s tavern and boarding house. Either we’re still in the Alt world, or this happened in both worlds. Both worlds, is my guess.

Silja has died in childbirth. A woman tells Hanno that he has to be strong now for his father. Someone holds crying baby Agnes. A crazed looking Bartosz bursts into the room and kneels at Silja’s side. The midwife tells him the baby’s name. He looks overwhelmed.

Forward to 2041.

Under a full moon, Hanno and Elisabeth leave their cabin to bring in the laundry that’s hung outside. Elisabeth asks Hanno to tell her about paradise. As he tells her the same story he told her in the caves in 2020, 2053 Charlotte and Elisabeth sneak into their cabin to kidnap Baby Charlotte. Elisabeth picks up the baby she lost 12 years prior. Charlotte takes the pocket watch.

When Hanno is done with the story, they hug and take the laundry inside, where they discover that Charlotte is missing.

Hanno vs Noah

By telling Elisabeth the story, Hanno keeps her facing away from the cabin during the kidnapping, so she has no idea what happens. But as it’s happening, he seems like he’s upset and trying to control his emotions. From where he’s standing, he should notice the movements of the two women entering and leaving his cabin.

Noah/Hanno tells the Paradise story to Elisabeth twice on camera- just after Peter dies, which he knew was coming but didn’t prevent, and now during Charlotte’s kidnapping. Did he know it was coming and that he had to let it happen? Even though he spends the rest of his life blaming Adam and Claudia?

I think he did know that he had to let it happen, but he blames them because Charlotte is taken as part of their war. Prime Hanno blames Adam/Jonas and Claudia for the whole war and the way it tears the whole family apart, starting with the death of his mother. Silja was born in the 50s. If she hadn’t been time displaced, she probably wouldn’t have died in childbirth.

Before he dies, Bartosz tells his son to ask Adam why he took Hanno back in as an adult, after the apocalypse and after Charlotte was taken, and called him Noah instead of Hanno. The biblical Noah is remembered for saving his own family and two members of every species. Since we are all theoretically descended from those winners, we see it as a victory for the virtuous.

We rarely think about the fact that Bible Noah knew the flood was coming and did nothing to stop everyone but his family from dying. Noah’s immediate family weren’t actually much better than anyone else. It’s more likely that Noah had boat building skills and was in the right place at the right time. But Noah went along with God’s plan and watched everyone die, feeling quite good about himself. In fact, when it’s all over, God makes a backhanded promise to Noah:

“Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.”

God promises he won’t send another apocalypse, even though humans are born evil with no hope of ever changing. God has apparently given up on finding good in humanity and is settling for telling people to be fruitful and multiply.

Like so many others, Hanno usually has good intentions overall, but he performs evil acts, such as killing Erik, Yasin and Mads, to attain his goals. In the Dark world, consequences usually catch up with the characters over time, no matter their intentions.

Hanno leaves the cabin and goes straight to Jonas, who’s working in the bunker, and demands to know where Charlotte is. Jonas is taken by surprise as Hanno shoves him up against a wall and nearly chokes him to death. Hanno continues to ask where Charlotte is and whether Jonas or Claudia took her. He says that he finally understands how Jonas betrays their friendship. Before he leaves, he curses Jonas with endless suffering.

Too late. Jonas has been there for a long time. Or is this falling out between best friends the true origin of the timeline split? They’ve been close for 18 years. I think that’s Jonas’ real time record. And their fireside chat showed that they really were very close.

Causality. Such a slippery concept on this show.

Hanno returns to Elisabeth, who looks like her soul has been ripped from her body. She’s fondling Charlotte’s tiny knit cap. He promises to find Charlotte and bring her back. A bit of resolve forms in Elisabeth’s eyes as he gets up to leave, but they both know their life together is over. He picks up the triquetra diary and puts it inside his coat, an offering to help smooth his way back into Adam’s lair after wishing him endless suffering.

Where is Charlotte? Mikkel? Ulrich? Mads?

Noah/Hanno does find Charlotte after some number of years in his life. We aren’t told how many, though he refers to it as a long time, during their first conversation in the clock shop. When he finds her in 2019, after reading the final pages of the triquetra diary, she’s 49 years old and has already been told by Stranger Jonas that Noah killed Yasin, Erik and Mads. That’s the true betrayal of the Jonas-Hanno friendship. Adam is no longer Hanno’s friend, so I don’t think it matters what he does to Adult Hanno/Noah. Hanno is just waiting for the chance to kill Adam.

It’s Stranger who drives Hanno’s long lost daughter from him by giving her out of context information that benefits Stranger and makes Noah seem like a terrible person who’s only motivated by his cult’s orders and his own sadism. That’s what we all thought about Noah in season 1.

Instead, Noah is a driven man, more like an addict who’ll do anything to get what he needs, which is something Stranger Jonas should understand. For a long time, Jonas mainly takes his pain out on himself and Martha. But even in his more benign forms, he’s coerced into participating in Michael’s death and Mikkel’s kidnapping, which ultimately lead to Ulrich’s confinement and Katharina’s death.

Adam coerces Hanno into becoming a demon just as surely as Claudia leads Jonas to his fate as Adam, heartless mass killer. Hanno can’t simply leave his daughter alone and abandoned in the world. He’s been trained since his mother died to be a caretaker and fixer. The murder of the boys is even mixed up with raising Helge and getting him back to 1954.

Meanwhile, Charlotte is displaced in time in before she’s even born in 2041, since Hanno was born in 1904 and Elisabeth was born in 2011. In addition to her kidnapping to a third time period, she and Elisabeth give birth to each other.

Alt Charlotte was born in 1971, the year HG Tannhaus tells Prime Teen Charlotte his original granddaughter was born. But Noah and Elisabeth still enter the bunker in the Alt world and Charlotte and Elisabeth are still shown giving birth to each other on the Alt world family tree. Is this a clue or a mistake?

If this is real, and isn’t changed within 48 hours of me posting this recap, then it perhaps fits with the theory I’ve had about Charlotte since sometime in S2- I think that when she’s kidnapped as an infant, 3 versions of her are swapped between 3 worlds, not just taken to another time in the same world. If the Charlotte who’s in the Alt world was born in 1971, then she could be the Charlotte either from Tannhaus’ world or Bartosz’s world. Alt Infant Charlotte would have been taken to the Prime world and Prime Infant Charlotte would have gone to the 3rd world.

The Adult Elisabeths and Charlottes (or someone else- we don’t know who ran Marek’s car off the road) would have done this round robin with the infants between the 3 (or 4) worlds to help create or strengthen a connection in time and space- an earlier, less binding version of the Unknown. I can’t explain every detail because of the bootstrap paradoxes involved in Charlotte’s family and HG’s family, but I suspect they are the same family, slightly altered between variations in timelines, time accidents and deliberate tampering.

HG Tannhaus: “A man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills. All the paths we take in our lives, every choice we make, is guided by our deepest desires. It’s pointless to fight this sense of want. It determines every one of our actions, no matter how difficult and unimaginable they seem.”

This is a very different sentiment from the one expressed by Prime world HG Tannhaus, who’s said many times that he’s always wanted to travel, but circumstances have required him to stay in the present, running his clock shop.

3rd world, 1986, the bunker.

Tannhaus looks at the family photo on the wall and removes his lab coat. It’s time. He presses keys on a keyboard, fiddles with this and that, then decisively presses the 2 blood red buttons on the wall. The time machine fires up- literally. The center ball is coated in a thin layer of orange flames, with waves of electricity flowing up the arms, but the machine doesn’t seem to be out of control in any way. The music and other sound effects aren’t ominous either.

Prime world, 1911, Tannhaus factory.

Bartosz is in the courtyard working on a car when Hannah and her approximately 4 year old daughter approach, device/apparatus suitcase in hand. Bartosz, who already looks haunted, recognizes that this child is his wife, who’s been dead for about a year. Hannah asks for Jonas. Bartosz warns her that traveling has changed him, but still takes her to see Jonas in his lair.

Jonas is in a transitional stage between Stranger and Adam. He’s in Adam’s uniform and stands staring at the painting. But he still stands tall and straight. Adam will eventually sort of melt into rounded edges and a more socially presentable public persona. This man is still in the midst of the hottest part of the fire.

When he turns around, Hannah is momentarily shocked by the extreme facial scarring. In this time period, his face looks like a skull in ways that will soften later, maybe when he tires of punishing himself. Hannah recovers quickly and introduces his sister to him.

She’s clearly saddened by what she sees, but as a mother who wishes she could have helped spare her child this pain. She touches his cheek and explains that an old woman, Eva, came to her a few days ago and told her that Jonas needed her and where to find him. She promises to be there for him from now on.

Since Jonas doesn’t want to be spared pain, he’s not interested in her compassion and even finds it repulsive. He removes her hand from his cheek with enough menace that Hannah feels it. He finds himself repulsive and probably finds anything connected to him repulsive right now. He tells Igor Bartosz to take them to the bedroom.

Later that night, once it’s raining, Jonas sneaks into the bedroom. He goes to Silja first, but as he’s carefully folding down her covers, Hannah awakens and asks what he’s doing. He decides it’s Hannah’s turn first and sits on the edge of her bed, as we’ve seen Young Jonas do for sweet mother-son talks.

This is an entirely different situation. He tells Hannah that she and Silja aren’t right here and all of the pieces must be in the correct position. Hannah knows something isn’t right with him, but he’s got her lying down and blocked in. He gently touches her face, calls her Mom one last time, then pulls her pillow out from under her and smothers her to death.

She and Silja are both in white nightgowns. Women should refuse all white garments on this show. It never ends well.

When Jonas is done brutally murdering his mother, he turns to his baby sister and wakes her up, telling her has a secret to show her. He needs her to be quiet so they don’t wake her mom up. He carries her out so that she’s facing back toward Hannah’s body, staring at it the entire way to the door. Hannah very clearly isn’t asleep.

I can Only Salvage So Much from a Bad Situation, Okay?

So. That was sickening and exploitative. There is no good reason to include hints of pedophilia and for Jonas to brutally murder the mother he hasn’t seen in decades. Given the number of characters who commit heinous crimes, such as Helene, and are never caught, and the women who just disappear, such as Greta, there was no reason to bring Hannah back simply to kill her this way.

Though Tannhaus’ last voiceover certainly justifies indulging in any sexual or violent predilection you can come up with, regardless of the other person’s desires. Is that what this show is saying? Anything goes?

The message, if there ever was one, has gotten confused in these last few episodes, as if this show doesn’t know what it’s trying to say anymore. I’m tearing my hair out trying to continue some kind of coherent narrative through line that holds together through the final episode. I finally realized the only way to do it was to give up.

Maybe Claudia has taken the wheel and Hannah had to die out of revenge, because she allowed Ulrich and Katharina to think Regina had turned Ulrich in for rape. That’s a giant stretch though, to the point where I’m writing the show for the creators. And many innocent people who had little to do with Claudia or Regina have died horrible deaths.

I could play the mythology card, and say that Jonas is Hades, the god of the Underworld, who has been collecting young women as his Persephones. Hannah, as the Mother goddess/Demeter, came to look into the situation. Jonas sent her back to another realm, where she wouldn’t interfere with his plans. The myth is sometimes called The Rape of Persephone. In mythology, Demeter mostly wins, though they essentially end with joint custody of Persephone, creating the seasons. Demeter isn’t going to win here.

And there’s only one Persephone, whereas Jonas is collecting everyone’s children for his cult, but mostly girls. Adding a scene where he has a skull face, creeps on a small child in bed at night who’s dressed in white, then kills her mother when he’s caught and carries the little girl off, pretty much solidifies his symbolic nature as a pedophile. At least they only implied the pedophelia itself, rather than showing it.

But this finishes the assassination of both his character and Martha’s character. When we met Martha, she was was on a hunger strike to save starving children. Now she’s procuring women and girls for men who like to murder women and rape little girls?

Yes, the fairy-tale witch imagery has been there all season in Eva’s long black dress. I’d hoped they’d avoid actually going to the stereotype for old women, witches and the biblical Eve, even though they’re obsessed with stamping out original sin. I should have realized that getting rid of the “origin” would involve killing as many mother figures as possible, while turning over little girls to men as child brides.

Because it’s really all Jonas’ mother’s fault, right? She must have done something wrong to make him this way. She must love him too much or too little or embarrass him in front of the other boys. Otherwise he wouldn’t need to live in the basement forever and only have sex twice in his life.

This is an incredibly disappointing direction for this show to take, in so many ways. Beyond misogyny, the philosophy seems to be that people just can’t control themselves and there’s no point in trying.

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1920, Erna’s tavern.

Adult Hanno enters the bar, fresh from 2041. The crowd pauses for a moment when the stranger enters. He tells Erna that he’s come a long way and needs someplace to rest. She calls for Young Hanno and tells him to take their guest upstairs to a room.

Adult Hanno goes to see Adam in his lair. Adam has become the older version played by Dietrich Hollinderbäumer. Before Hanno can speak, Adam says that he’s been waiting for Hanno’s visit. He says that Hanno was right about Claudia all along. She was the one who stole Charlotte. Adam says that Hanno needs to find the missing pages from the triquetra diary, with the help of Helge. Then he’ll find Charlotte, his final destination and his Paradise. Adam hands Hanno a bible and says that this will be his last cycle. “Are you ready, Noah?”

Forward to 2052, the bunker.

Old Claudia gives instructions to Stranger Jonas. They’ve finally stabilized the dark matter/Cesium 137. She’s sending Stranger off to November 2019 to lead Young Jonas down the correct path. If he helps everyone he knows complete this cycle in the exact same way they’ve done all the other cycles, for sure change will occur this time.

I have to wonder what she’s been putting in his food for the last few decades.

She hands him Tannhaus’ book, A Journey Through Time and says that the author will repair the apparatus. Once the device is repaired, he can destroy the passage and the knot. It’ll work for sure this time.

Because doing everything exactly the same way always creates the change you’re looking for.

As he’s headed out the door, she tells him not to ever give up hope. Then she tears out the last few pages of the triquetra diary, sticks them in her coat pocket, and leaves.

Now for a brief recap of the series. Stranger goes to Winden in November 2019, when Mikkel and the other boys have gone missing. Noah experiments on the time machine chair, killing 3 boys in the process. Old Claudia gets Gretchen from 1953 and brings her Adult Claudia in 1986, to prove that time travel is real and that she’s really Adult Claudia’s older self.

Both Claudias will abandon Gretchen with Regina in order to pursue time travel and supposedly save Regina. It doesn’t occur to any Claudia, ever, to actually be a mother to her daughter, which is why I question her motives.

Claudia abandons the dog, the daughter, the lover and the father. She kills the daughter and the father and leaves the lover to die in the apocalypse. This is not a woman who will devote eternity or destroy worlds to save someone. This is an obsessed scientist who is devoted to solving a problem and needs an emotional flag to keep her motivated through the tough times.

The writers can retcon the character they created. That’s their prerogative and TV shows do it all the time. But this is the Claudia they created. She doesn’t move heaven and earth for Regina. She moves them for science.

Hey, remember that time that Bartosz decided to get in on the Back to the Future action, so he put on Christopher Lloyd’s duster and went to rescue Martha from getting killed by Adam? I know it was about 9k words and 110 years ago, but I promise you, that did happen. After 3 seasons of Claudia trying to save Regina and Jonas trying to save Prime Martha and Noah trying to save Charlotte and half of Winden trying to save Mikkel, and all of them failing, all the time, plucky little Alt Teen Bartosz jumped in and rescued Alt Teen Martha.

I knew I liked that kid, And his older self, too. In fact, I think he’s the chosen one on the 3rd planet that his Grandma is trying to take out of the system in her obsessive quest to ruin everything for everyone, everytime in everyway. That’s why this episode focused on Bartosz’s story and the story of his son, Hanno/Noah. We’ve already spent quite a bit of time on Bartosz’s granddaughter, Charlotte and her family, for 3 seasons. And Charlotte has known all along that she was important.

This episode is kind of its own little season, focusing on a third world/timeline that’s almost identical to the prime world/timeline, so we’ve switched between them throughout the episode. That’s my theory. Time is so mucked up that apparently even the writers can’t be bothered to sort it out anymore, so here we are. I can’t tell you when we were where, necessarily, just that we jumped around a lot without the normal markers telling us what world we were in.

Also, I think the HG Tannhaus time machine world, which I’ve been calling the 3rd world, is a 4th world, that’s not Bartosz’s world. As I said, Bartosz’s world is so close to Jonas’ and Eva’s that it blends with theirs, so it doesn’t get the widescreen black bars at the top and bottom that HG’s world does. HG’s world/timeline has some significant differences from the other 3, so it looks different on screen. That will be explored more in episode 8.

Okay, so. Our plucky boy hero, Alt Teen Bartosz, convinces Martha to leave Jonas in his house, so he can live in his mom’s basement forever like the loser he is. She goes back to Erit Lux with Bartosz instead.

One poof of awesome gold glitter later, and we’re there. Those paintings are still scorched and I’m sorry, I still can’t spoil how it happens. Truly annoying, I agree. The writing and editing for S3 are meant to f–k you over, but I doubt they meant for it to indecipherable rather than mind blowing. 3 episodes worth of teasing when the paintings burn? Really? And then all of the scorched painting scenes look so alike that it’s nearly impossible to put them in order, though I’m not sure why we would care enough to go back and try, when it’s all said and done. I know I don’t. Somebody didn’t think that one through.

Martha wonders why Bartosz brought her there. He tells her that the Marthas are the only ones who can save them, because they are the Light. Martha realizes she’s in the hands of an Erit Lux true believer, though she has no idea what that means.

You know what? I think it mostly means love. I think Old Claudia impersonated Eva when she brought Hannah to be murdered by Jonas. I’m going to singlehandedly exonerate Martha/Eva of this crime, for my own sanity’s sake, and go on with my life. Readers, you do you and believe whatever you want. I can’t work with a meaningless world. What would be the point? I know they’re going to continue with Eva pushing apocalypses and whatever, but I’m going to believe that she at least loves her little family of followers, even if she doesn’t show it, because I need Martha, or someone, to be a good person in order to continue writing.

And the madness continues, as Eva enters the room. Martha says something nasty to Eva and Eva says they’re more alike than she thinks. Then she gives her version of Adam’s patented “You’ll grow up to be just as bad as your parents” speech, before pulling out a dirty machete and swiping it across Teen Martha’s eye.

She tells Martha that she can’t tell all of the Marthas apart anymore unless they have festering wounds to go by. But Adam is the one who’s trying to kill her. The disfiguring wound is a reminder that things can always get worse. Choosing Jonas/Adam’s side means choosing death, while choosing Eva’s side, which is ultimately her own side, means choosing life.

This is strange reasoning for someone who’s main motivation is protecting her son- if Martha doesn’t choose Jonas sometimes, the Unknown is never born, because this is the version of Martha that brings him to the Alt world.

There’s really no way to spin what Eva’s says into something that makes much sense. They just wanted to squeeze in more mirroring of Adam/Jonas’ scenes.

I can put a meaningful spin on it, but I’m pretty sure this is coming from me, and not the show- in real life, the underlying reason for the slash would be to make Martha unattractive to creepy old men like the ones Jonas becomes. The road to women’s accomplishments is paved with women who fell by the wayside because they couldn’t take the sexual harassment, even rape, from their male colleagues anymore and were driven to quit the male dominated fields they worked in. And the women who got married and pregnant, giving up their careers.

By taking away Martha’s perfect features, she takes away her attractiveness as an innocent young woman to both Stranger and Adam. If they want her, they will have to deal with more than just Young Martha’s pretty face and apparently neither of them are ever inclined to do so. Adam collects other young women instead, until he finds a replacement Young Martha Eve to torture to death for tempting him into sin.

Yet God and Lucifer both still refuse to take him back.

Unfortunately, Martha/Eva didn’t realize Prime Claudia was also her enemy. As far as I can tell, Alt Claudia was actually working for/with Eva. Prime Claudia is the megalomaniac who took over the universe.

I suspect the creators just wanted to throw in one more senseless, sadistic action against a main character for shock value, plus they needed Martha/Eva to mirror Adam’s disfigurement, but sexism stops them from making her as scarred as Adam.

Time to take the Wayback Machine over to the end of episode 6. Adam has the other Alt Teen Martha dressed in the only rapey white slip he had left after 66 years of kidnapping and torturing women. He’s tied her to some Faye Wray scaffolding under the enhanced God particle. The God particle is turned up to 11 and it’s incredibly excited to finally be turned loose.

Martha’s yelling for mercy and Adam is excited to finally be getting somewhere in his life’s work. He’s pretty sure he’s never used an enhanced God particle to kill the love of his life and his own child inside the womb before. Surely this ultimate human sacrifice will do the trick and Time will finally be satisfied with him.

A portal opens up above Martha’s head. Then the God particle finally escapes its enslavement, mercifully taking Martha and her unborn child with it. Time has always had a fondness for her.

The cloud and the woman disappear. Jonas assumes they’re dead, because he has so few brain cells left.

I sincerely hope that Martha is in a world outside the Dark universe, with better writing and no white slips. Women actually die in the clothes we’re wearing- we don’t change our clothes when we find out murder is on the schedule, or keep a special victim dress on hand for the occasion. I f–king loathe the sight of those things. “Time to die or be abused, little girl. Here’s your pseudo-virgin gown to remind that you’re ultimately powerless.” Where is the corresponding male attire?

Jonas waits to disappear, too, but he doesn’t. He’s dumbfounded. Life is so unfair. Why does Martha get to die, but he doesn’t?

I wouldn’t mind if he eviscerated himself to see if it would stick.

A moment later, the door to the control room creaks open and his other nemesis, Old Claudia, who Noah killed on his orders almost a century ago in chronological time, walks in.

“Hello, Jonas.”

I’ll give her credit for knowing how to make an entrance.

Martha on her way to Oz- You can see Martha is getting transferred up into the cloud. The upper right part of the cloud shows a bright light and the opening to the next reality.

Commentary

The God particle has literally never killed anyone on this show, much as Jonas has clearly tried to get it to kill him. The dark matter/Cesium 137/cloud/goo/cosmic egg transforms, it doesn’t just cease to exist. In fact, nothing in the universe ever just ceases to exist. Everything either transforms or transfers to a new location. That’s basic physics. In this case, there’s nothing left behind, so it goes somewhere else.

If Dark is following its own rules, then Time took Martha somewhere, probably to Bartosz’s world. It would make sense for this to be a way to create a new connection through time and space, maybe connecting the 3 worlds together. But we’re in the Endgame and the rules no longer apply.

If they ever did. It’s retcon time.

Next episode, we visit the Biff World of Claudia’s mind. Don’t look her directly in the eye and don’t take your hand off your valuables. Actually, that sojourn in the Old West 19th century was probably more fun than anyone realized at the time, even without antibiotics, since there was nothing Claudia or Biff wanted there.

Too bad Adult Bartosz wasn’t able to get the car he was fixing to fly- or was he???? Maybe there’s a world where instead of showing Hannah to her room, he grabbed her, Noah, Silja and Agnes and drove away as far and as fast as he could. Parts of early 20th century Northern Africa seem nice. Or maybe they took the God particle forward 50 years, then went to live in the south of France.

Wait. I just realized. Bartosz is in the Harry Potter world. He’s Mad Eye Moody! Constant Vigilance!

Kill the Origin or Find Another Timeline?

I bolded the first half of HG’s speech from the graveyard because it fits both his point of view and that of his protege, Jonas, who spends 66 years trying to go back to the origin point and bring back something that’s lost, whether it’s Mikkel or Martha. For HG, it’s Marek, Sonja and Baby Charlotte. But the second half of the speech is equally important:

“If our life is defined as everything between birth and death, it exists there, ad infinitum. Could we succeed in cheating death by finding a way to bring back life, there, between time?”

The episode takes its name from the bolded phrase, between time. The 3rd world is formally introduced in this episode. The 3rd world is the Time/Eternal Recurrence that is between the other two Times/Eternal Recurrences that we’ve been watching. What HG is really saying is, in this multiverse full of infinite possibilities, could he find another timeline where things worked out differently for his family? Could he jump to that timeline and live happily there? Or is he hoping to meld the two timelines- bring that Marek and Sonja home to this timeline? It’s not clear.

This is echoed in Stranger Jonas’ speech from S2Ep1, explaining that he is both infinite as part of the multiverse, but also finite as himself, the single soul known as Jonas:

“You could say that I exist infinitely. I’m here now. And I exist for every second between my birth and my death. I’m always Jonas. I’m the same as I was and yet not the same. Just as you’re not the same person who came through that door about an hour ago.”

No matter where or when he goes, what he does, or what he looks like, he’s still Jonas. At first, Hannah still wants the Jonas who left a few months ago, but she quickly accepts Stranger as her son, just as she accepted the proto Adam she met in this episode. In S2 Stranger was grateful for her acceptance, then, in a supreme act of hypocrisy, rejected her when he learned she’d cheated on his father one time before Michael’s death.

The next time they meet, in this episode, he murders her, either because she’s served her purpose in his plans or because she’s kind to him at a time when retaining his strength requires removing all human warmth from his life.

He is still Jonas, but he’s changed everything about himself, from his looks and dress to his demeanor to his home time period and way of thinking. He is no longer trying to save his loved ones. He is now trying to find the origin moment and destroy it. He’s redefined saving as destroying and convinced himself that saving himself saves everyone else. Maybe when he finds the origin moment and changes it, it will set both him and the God particle free from their enslavement. He is now enslaved to a life he can’t bear to live.

Gustav taught him a prophecy of a Paradise that was a dream filled with beauty and light, the Heaven or Ascension of so many religions. Jonas turned it into darkness as an absence of light, where he would remove the cancer that caused his pain (in the form of the God particle, which is the true knot) and kill the patient (himself) at the same time.

In his scenes with Hannah in this episode, Jonas’ true state is laid bare. During the time between 1890-1920, he is a 4th Jonas, Lord Death, with his facial scars meant to look like a skull.

In other words, maybe he’s made some sort of Ghost Rider deal with the God particle, but there are no flaming skulls involved. Just a pact to get out of this world together. That would explain the way they are bound. No one else seems to share quite the same relationship that he does with the God particle, Time and Death, not even Martha.

Martha, the Unknown and the God particle are his family. They all disappear at once and the other 3 versions of the Unknown presumably die in the nuclear meltdown. Unknown has time to save himself if he wants to, but he told us he was about to die. Anyway, after Jonas sent everyone else who was with him in 2053 to the past, it must be devastating for him to watch Martha and the God particle leave him behind and alive while they get raptured together.

He’s in a heartbroken, confused state when Claudia appears to tell him another story.

Images courtesy of Netflix.

Dark Season 3 Episode 7: Between the Time Recap- Hanno, Bartosz and HG Tannhaus move to the front of the house as gaps in the story are filled. #DarkNetflix In episode 6, the worlds ended, thanks to Adam's double apocalypse. In episode 7, we meet the new world.

#Between the Time #Dark #did not stick the landing #dystopia #Lisa Vicari #Louis Hofmann #metacrone #Mystery #netflix #Paul Lux #recaps #review #science fiction

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